Collected Articles on Mervyn Peake
by G. Peter Winnington

I have collected some of my articles on Peake spanning the last 40 years; they are available as pdf files, with appropriate illustrations. Total length 200 pages.
Not all were published in the Mervyn Peake Review or Peake Studies. Some have appeared before only in other periodicals and books. I have grouped them more or less thematically, rather than chronologically.

The first group or ‘volume’ contains only two articles, which I think of as being introductory because they were written for people with little or no knowledge of Peake and his work. The first, ‘Inside the Mind of Mervyn Peake’, examines how Peake spatializes the contents of the mind; it is probably not familiar to most people, as it was first published only in Switzerland. The second, ‘The Critical Reception of the Titus Books,’ shows how Peake’s novels were first received.

You can download this first group free.

The second group is largely biographical in orientation, covering
• ‘Peake’s Parents’ Years in China’;
• my discovery of ‘A Letter From China’ by Peake;
• a piece describing ‘Kuling, Peake’s Birthplace’ and a more recent one,
• ‘Peake and Kuling’, written as a review of the British Library’s publication of ‘Memoirs of a Doctor in China’, misleadingly titled Peake in China and with an ill-informed introduction by Hilary Spurling;
• ‘Burning the Globe: another attempt to situate Gormenghast’, on the geography and mentality of Gormenghast; and
• ‘The Writing of Titus Groan.’

Group 3 comprises articles identifying some of Peake’s sources and possible influences on his work:
• ‘Tracking Down the Umzimvubu Kaffirs’;
• ‘Peake, Knole and Orlando’;
• ‘Mervyn Peake and the Cinema’ (updated with a note on recent findings);
• ‘Parodies and Poetical Allusions’;
• ‘Peake and Alice (and Arrietty)’. (This is the opening speech delivered at the 2011 centenary conference.)

In 4th place comes a short ‘volume’ relating to Peake’s art, listing his production as a war artist, and reproducing a piece that few people will have read before: ‘The Draw of the Line’. It was written to accompany an exhibition of Peake’s work in Yverdon, Switzerland, in 2009 (see Lines of Flight on this site). It complements what I wrote in Mervyn Peake: the Man and his Art.

Group 5 includes thematic articles:
• ‘Fuchsia and Steerpike: Mood and Form’;
• ‘Peake’s Thing and Hawthorne’s Pearl’;
• ‘Mervyn Peake’s Lonely World’;
• ‘Peake’s Ballads: “The Touch o’ the Ash” and The Rhyme of the Flying Bomb.’

Group 6 comprises articles on the editing and resulting (un)reliability of Peake’s texts:
• ‘The Misfortunes of Captain Slaughterboard’;
• ‘Editing Peake’;
• ‘On the Editing of Titus Alone’;
• ‘A Note on the Folio Texts’;
• ‘Peake de luxe: the Collected Works from Queen Anne Press’.

Pricing

Each group or volume is £1.25 or CHF 1.50 or €1.50 or US$1.50 when purchased separately.
Buy the whole set and the price is just £5 or CHF 6 or €6 or US$6 for all six files.
Pay to the Peake Studies email address at PayPal – or ask to use some other means of payment.

Do contact me if you have any questions.

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