About the Author
Mervyn Peake (1911 - 1968) was a British writer, poet and illustrator. He is best known for the Titus books (also called the Gormenghast trilogy), which comprise Titus Groan, Gormenghast and Titus alone. The three existing works of this saga are only the beginning of what Peake conceived as a much longer cycle, which would recount the adventures of his protagonist Titus Groan throughout his life, but death surprised the author before he could finish it. The work, unfinished, is often considered, erroneously, as a trilogy. His work is also often compared to that of his contemporary J. R. R. R. Tolkien, although the surrealistic treatment of his stories is more influenced by his early admiration for Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson than Tolkien's studies of mythology.
