Mr Pye

The novel gives a clear sense of Sark as somewhere both remarkable and beautiful. * The Guardian *I am delighted to meet you,’ trills Mr Pye to a fisherman. ‘Are you, eh, you fat little porker,’ the thug replies. ‘B- you. * - *Peake has been praised, but he has also been mistrusted,” observed Anthony Burgess in his introduction to Titus Groan . “His prose works are not easily classifiable: they are unique as, say, the books of Peacock or Lovecraft are unique … It is difficult, in postwar English writing, to get away with big rhetorical gestures. Peake manages it because, with him, grandiloquence never means diffuseness; there is no musical emptiness in the most romantic of his descriptions; he is always exact. * Anthony Burgess *The fable is cleverly and gracefully resolved and the final scenes are a joy to read. Peake’s illustrations complement the novel very well and these, too, are examples of his charm, of his enormous illustrative range. * Washington Post *

Mervyn Peake was born in 1911. He is perhaps most famous for the ‘Gormenghast’ trilogy which were published between 1946 and 1959 - Titus Groan, Gormenghast and Titus Alone. He also wrote a book for children, Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor, and several volumes of poetry. He was also a gifted book illustrator. He died in 1968.

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.