To label Mervyn Peake as a fantasy writer is to focus on his Titus novels--Titus Groan (1946), Gormenghast (1950), and Titus Alone (1959; second edition, 1970), arguably his most well-known prose--as well as his novel Mr. Pye (1953) and his short stories. He was also a poet, a painter, one of the best illustrators of his time, and a playwright, working in a variety of media until his health declined from Parkinson's disease during the 1950s and 1960s.

Regarded as a maverick or "major minor" writer, Peake is not easily labeled. He wrote in the tradition of Charles Dickens and Laurence Sterne, yet he can also be linked with the bildungsroman (the novel of growth and development); Gothic fantasy, which W. P. Day in In the Circles of Fear and Desire (1985) defines as a parody of romance and realism; and the postmodern novel. Although he is one of many writers, including J...