Mervyn Peake: The Man and His Art - Hardcover

4.4

60 ratings by Goodreads

9780720612844: Mervyn Peake: The Man and His Art

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0720612845 ISBN 13: 9780720612844

Publisher: Peter Owen, 2007

This new collection of illustrations, paintings, photographs, letters, notebook pages, and other material, some never before published, is a unique memoir of Mervyn Peake's life and work.

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About the Author:

Mervyn Peake was the author of The Glassblowers, Gormenghast, The Rhyme of the Flying Bomb, Shapes and Sounds, Titus Alone, and Titus Groan. He was awarded the W. H. Heinemann Foundation Prize by the Royal Society of Literature in 1950. G. Peter Winnington is the founder of Peake Studies, devoted to the work of Mervyn Peake and known as the leading authority on the writer and artist.

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* Writer-artist Peake (1911–68) seems ever about to be vaulted into the front rank of twentieth-century English artists. This marvelous album focused on his artwork may at last do the trick. His writing and the illustrative art for which he is best known are of a piece, balancing beauty and ugliness, humor and horror, sumptuousness and bleakness. Although he created gorgeous, romantic portraits, his famous figures are grotesques, descendants of Cruikshank's and Tenniel's in comic appeal; of Goya's monsters, berserkers, and victims in shock appeal—especially in a satiric World War II series representing paintings ostensibly by Hitler. His finest illustrations are those done for his own books, especially the trilogy of Titus Groan, Gormenghast, and Titus Alone that sustains his literary reputation, especially among the upper literary tier of fantasists. His son Sebastian collaborates with art consultant Alison Eldred and biographer G. Peter Winnington in juxtaposing generous portfolios of the art with a text including contributions by Peake's much younger writer friend Michael Moorcock and theatrical and film adapters of the trilogy as well as seven technically revelatory biocritical chapters by Winnington. As rewarding to the intellect as to the eye, this is a magnificent book. Olson, Ray

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