About this title: Gormenghast is the vast, crumbling castle to which the seventy-seventh Earl, Titus Groan, is lord and heir. Titus is expected to rule this gothic labyrinth of turrets and dungeons, and his eccentric and wayward subjects, according to strict age-old rituals, but things are changing in the castle. Titus must contend with treachery, manipulation and murder as well as his own longing for a life beyond the castle walls.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: paperback
Publisher: Random House, London
Date published: 1999
ISBN-13:9780099288893ISBN:0099288893
Description: b&w drawings. Very Good throughout in lightly rubbed covers. 8vo. 953pp. One volume edition of Mervyn Peake's classic Gormenghast Trilogy, Titus Groan, Gormenghast, and Titus Alone; illustrated with b&w drawings by the author; this copy Very Good throughout; covers lightly rubbed, with some minor creasing, reading creases to spine. read more
Edition: First Printing
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: London: Vintage, 1999, 1st Printing
Date published: 1999
ISBN-13:9780099288893ISBN:0099288893
Description: Photo Cover. Good. -----------trade paperback, a solid Good copy, cover wear and creases, 953 pages of Peake's unique universe, any image directly beside this listing is the actual book and not a generic photo. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date published: 2000
ISBN-13:9780099284383ISBN:0099284383
Description: Fair. 0099284383. 1999 Vintage paperback. Reading copy. Pages good. Cover very worn and creased. Still a perfectly useable copy. Will be sent from Devon within 24 hours by first class post.; 1.73 x 8.11 x 5.75 Inches; 953 pages. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Arrow
Date published: 1997
ISBN-13:9780749314262ISBN:0749314265
Description: Acceptable. EXCELLENT value for money and ready for dispatch. Delivery usually within 3/5 days. Our reputation is built on our Speedy Delivery Service and our Customer Service Team. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage Classics
Date published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780099288893ISBN:0099288893
Description: Acceptable. Book cover has a crease, Book cover is a little worn, **FAST SHIPPING FROM UK** We aim to post all books within 1-2 working days. All orders are fully guaranteed and sent from our warehouse in the United Kingdom Email support for all customers. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Del Rey
Date published: 1977
ISBN-13:9780345272355ISBN:0345272358
Description: Good. 3 Paperbacks With Wear And Tanning From Age. Significant Wear To The Slip Case. Great Customer Service. We Stand Behind All Of Our Products. read more
Edition: Later Printings
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Methuen; Mandarin, London
Date published: 1987
Description: Peter Harding; Mark Robertson; Very Good. 506, 511, 263 pp. All three books have light edge and corner wear; Titus is bumped on the spine; Gormenghast has creasing on its spine; no interior markings. Covers by Peter Harding and Mark Robinson. read more
Edition: Later Printings
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Books, London
Date published: 1970
Description: Mervyn Peake; Very Good- 506, 511, 263 pp. All three books have edge and corner wear with some creasing on the spines; no interior markings. Covers and interior illustrations by the author. read more
Edition: Later Printings
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Methuen; Mandarin, London
Date published: 1991
Description: Peter Harding; Mark Robinson; Very Good. 506, 511, 263 pp. All three books have light edge and corner wear with minor creasing on the spines; Gormenghast is store stamped, the other two are not. Scans are available for all books. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Overlook Hardcover
Date published: 1988
ISBN-13:9780879519742ISBN:0879519746
Description: Good. Purchasing this book supports the King County Library System Foundation. Thriftbooks and KCLSF have partnered to help raise additional funds for the library system. Ex-Library book-will contain library markings. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Edition: Fourth Printing
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Ballantine Books, New York
Date published: 1973
Description: Bob Pepper; Very Good+ 543, 568, 284 pp. Ballantine Books 23518, 23519, 23520. All three books have light edge and corner wear with uncreased spines; Book One has some creasing on the front hinge; no interior markings. Covers by Bob Pepper. Scans are available for all books. read more
Edition: Later Printings
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Ballantine Books, New York
Date published: 1973
Description: Bob Pepper; Very Good. 543, 568, 284 pp. Ballantine Books 23518, 23519, 23520. Later printings of the first Ballantine edition. All three books have light edge and corner wear with some minor creasing on the front panels; uncreased spines; Book Two is store stamped. Covers by Bob Pepper. read more
Edition: Later Printings
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Mandarin Books, London
Date published: 1991
Description: Mark Robertson; Mervyn Peake; Very Good+ 506, 511, 263 pp. All three books have light edge and corner wear with uncreased spines; no interior markings. Covers by Mark Robinson, interiors by the author. read more
Edition: Later Printings
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Mandarin Books, London
Date published: 1991
Description: Mark Robertson; Mervyn Peake; Very Good. 506, 511, 263 pp. All three books have edge and corner wear with minor creasing on the spines; no store stamps. Covers by Mark Robinson, interiors by the author. Scans are available for all books. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Penguin 1970
Date published: 1970
Description: ISBN B0019J2S2Y. Boxed set of Three Mass Market Mass Market Paperbacks. Later Printings. Tight sound copies in good to very good condition with fading and creasing to spines, edge wear. Box is in About Good Condition with clear magic tape repair to top edges, dust soiling and edge wear. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Penguin Books
Date published: 1969, 1970, 1972
Description: Comprised of the three separate Penguin paperbacks of the trilogy, "Titus Groan", "Gormenghast" and "Titus Alone". A rightly famous work of satire, high irony and Gothic imagination. First Paperback editions with illustrations by the author and throughout, including striking cover illustrations of Fuchsia, Steerpike and Prunesquallor. Good+ PBs with stains on rear of three volumes and creases on front of "Titus Groan", other two volumes are Good++. 1280pp total (505, 512 & 263pp respectively) read more
Description: Acceptable. Former Library book. Shows definite wear, and perhaps considerable marking on inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
"Have the trilogy as one book so will review as we go along...
Titus Groan - 4 stars
Starting with the birth of our titular character and ending at his 'Earling', every word of every sentence in between feels lovingly crafted, and makes up a thing of exquisitely dark beauty.
Set almost exclusively within the grounds of Gormenghast, the huge and brooding castle which shapes and consumes the lives of its many (mostly extremely eccentric) inhabitants, bound as they are to adhere to centuries of obscure ritual and tradition. But change is coming, engineered largely by the manipulative and treacherous Steerpike...
Every description within is fantastic, and every character so well drawn that you can hear their voices in your head long after putting the book down. It's almost hard to pick a favourite (I adore almost all of the women in different ways) but for me so far Lady Fushcia is the heart and soul of the book, and I'm terrified at the thought of whatever nefarious scheme Steerpike is going to involve her in. I wish dearly that I could reach inside the pages and wrench him away from her.
Excellent start to the trilogy, and can't wait to start the rest. Only dropped a star as I'm still not sure whether these changes on their way are good things or bad...
Gormenghast - 3 stars
...and the changes set in motion by events of the first book are fully realised, leaving the Groan line almost completely decimated and Titus striking out on his own, chasing freedom.
I found that the story had lost a little of its lustre in this instalment, helped in no small part by the dull first half in which we spend all of our time getting to know the Professors, watching Titus daydream through his childhood and Irma Prunesquallor preparing to snag a husband. The characters that we already knew and that I'd grown to adore were only fleetingly mentioned, and their absence was felt all the more keenly as some of these mentions cropped up (Nannie Slagg was done a disservice, I think, when she's suddenly brought back into the narrative by being found dead in her bed. After all the time we'd spent with her in the first book it might have been nice to have spent a little more time paying our respects).
The second half of the book is far more entertaining and interesting, as the rest of the inhabitants of Gormenghast are brought into play and we watch Steerpike's best laid plans go ever so slightly awry as he topples into homicidal mania, wrenching the Countess into action (yay!).
This instalment is far more bleak than the first book and the deaths of Flay and Fuschia meant that the heart of Gormenghast, for me, was entirely gone, even considering the melancholic turn that their characters had taken (Fuschia in particular - Flay's exit seemed quite fitting).
With the book ending with Titus striking out into the wide world it seems like a natural end to the story and it's hard to see where the story will go from here. Titus is not one of the more endearing or engaging characters for me so a book without any of the (all too few) remaining personalities isn't an entirely appealing prospect, but here goes nonetheless...
Titus Alone - 1 star
It's a real shame that the trilogy ended with this; published after Peake's death it lacks the polish that made the first two enjoyable and the material feels utterly divorced from everything that has gone before, save for the fact that Titus is our main character.
The big wide world that Titus finds himself in is far more modern and peopled by characters that are more self-consciously weird than any of the eccentrics that came before, and Titus' half-arsed wanderings are very disjointed which led to confusion on my part several times. If Peake had survived to have worked on this more I imagine that many of the relationships that spring up within would have been expanded upon, making the bonds between people far more palpable and understandable, but as it is it sometimes felt as though we'd just met someone and suddenly there was a whole history of feeling that we were supposed to be going along with (as was the case with Juno, Muzzlehatch, and the Anchor).
The character of Cheeta fell flat for me - her motivation in regard to her plans for Titus a simple case of being rejected, and not particularly unkindly, which meant her brand of 'evil' didn't really resonate as it had with Steerpike, who I understood even as I hated him. I also found the episode with her father's factory a little unnecessary and confusing - I wasn't entirely sure what had been supposed to be going on there and what import it had to the story.
All in all this was an ending I could have done without. I still think that as a whole this was a fabulously imaginative piece of work, incredibly well written, but I almost wish that I'd stopped after Gormenghast so that I could have kept my admiration fully intact, instead of having it tarnished a little by this instalment."
"I found this book used for $5. It's a beautiful edition, weighty, with creamy pages. It will undoubtedly cut an imposing figure on your bookcase. The Washington Post Book World review suggests that "many readers" consider it "the true fantasy classic of our time." I wonder who those many readers are. As a caveat, I've yet to read Gormenghast and Titus Alone, so maybe it's best taken as an entire oeuvre, but after reading Titus Groan, I don't feel I have the stamina to make it through the next to books. This is in stark contrast to J.R.R. Tolkien's novels, which I positively inhaled. I couldn't wait to finish one to get to the next.
So what makes Mervyn Peake's work different? Certainly there are things to like about Titus Groan. Robertson Davies says "Peake is a finer poet than Edgar Allan Poe," and whether true or not, it is an apt comparison. Peake's writing is lush beyond compare, utterly exquisite horror writing, swarthy with neogolism. In particular, Peake delights in his characters. Each has a Dickensian name that serves as a constant reminder and indictment, while further description is like a dissection: finely detailed and a little disgusting. I can "hear" Prunesquallor's laugh, I'm duly annoyed by and sympathetic to Mrs Slagg, and I'm positive the aunts Cora and Clarice were Roald Dahl's models for "Spiker and Sponge."
Take this section where he describes the movement of Swelter, the castle's psychotic and obese head chef:
"He insinuated himself through space. His body encroached, sleuth-like, from air-volume to air-volume, entering, filling and edging out of each in turn, the slow and vile belly preceding the horribly deliberate and potentially nimble progress of his fallen arches, (p. 330)."
The language is so poetic that it's imminently quotable. I could have opened to a random page and pointed. However, this quote also gets at my main difficulty with enjoying this novel. It was too "horribly deliberate." The writing overwhelms the story.
Most of the plot developments are announced far in advance and the reader is left watching pathos develop. And develop it does, but sadly, beyond the language level, it rarely excites."
"I am about two-thirds of the way through the second in this eccentric but wonderful trilogy. I had thought when I began reading it that my days of appreciating fantasy novels were long gone: and I admit it was a bit of a slow start. Now I can't wait to see what happens to Titus, the young Earl of Groan, who lives along with a cast of bizarre and wonderful characters, in the amazing Castle. Peake's very visual descriptions of the characters (like the Duchess and her herd of white cats) are riveting! If you appreciate Lord of the Rings, I think you may want to try this one! +++++++
I finally finished this, and I can recommend it without reservation. The third book, Titus Alone, is very different from the first two, but I think this departure worked for me. Peake was a brilliant writer and artist."
"Mervyn Peake's The Gormenghast Trilogy (Titus Groan, Gormenghast, and Titus Alone), published between 1946-1959, was originally conceived as a four or five book series, but the author died after the publication of only the first two books, the third having been reconstructed after his death from his notebooks. In this work, Peake created a locale and story almost hallucinogenic in atmosphere, internally consistent but sufficiently phantasmagoric as to seem dreamlike, fantastic, twisted and bizarre. Titus is the seventy-seventh Earl of Gormenghast, a realm located who knows where, in a time who knows when. Most obviously, Gormenshast is a huge and deteriorating castle, miles in extent, much of it uninhabited for hundreds of years and even unknown to and unexplored by its current inhabitants. The pervasive mood is one of dissolution, decay, deterioration, mindless remaining ritual and tradition without residual meaning; Gormenghast as a physical structure is falling apart, most of its primary inhabitants are in varying states of decline, and perpetuation of what has always been seems its only motivation. Peake uses language and images to create an archaic sense of gloom and unease, and his characterizations are unique and striking. "No eye may see dispassionately...(W)hat haunts the heart will, when it is found, leap foremost, blinding the eye and leaving the main of Life in darkness." "Their faces ...were quite expressionless, as though they were the preliminary lay-outs for faces and were waiting for sentience to be injected." "Seven clouds like a group of naked cherubs or sucking-pigs, floated their plump pink bodies across a sky of slate." "She appeared rather to inhabit, than to wear her clothes." He uses leitmotivs, almost as in a Wagner opera, to evoke personages again and again: "high, narrow shoulders and pale full forehead" always evoking Steerpike; identical purple dresses and reedy voices, the ancient twins; goggling eyes behind thick glasses, the doctor; spindly knees cracking like broken sticks, Flay. His vocabulary, with words like "hierophantic," "marcid," "adumbrate," "planked" (as a verb), further fostered for me a sense of the outré, the strange.
The story begins with Titus's birth and continues into his young adulthood. Drama is provided by Peake's setting up dyads and triads of antipathies in his characters, conflicts intensifying and almost always resulting in the deaths of one of his primary personages, the intrigue and tension building throughout the first two books, which are very much of a unified pair themselves, and always highlighting the development of the character of Titus as the accelerating claustrophobia of his own life deepens his self-understanding.
The third book, Titus Alone, was reconstructed posthumously from Peake's notebooks and has an ambiance all its own; it is almost as if the story starts anew, for now Titus has left Gormenshast on a quest primarily to escape the constricting demands and expectations of his hereditary role. The world in this book is modern, even postmodern, and frankly dystopic. All other characters from the first two books have been left behind, and an entirely new realm opens. At first, even the writing seemed disappointingly different, and I wondered if this was the result of clumsiness in the utilization of Peake's notebooks; but gradually both language and plot became fascinating in their own right and more consistent with the first two books, providing a rich and rewarding reading experience, even if one that at the end seemed truncated and inconclusive, consistent with Peake's original plan to continue the saga further.
So what is this work about, anyway? Is it a critique of our civilization, its ambivalent relationships to tradition and progress? Is it primarily the story of the psychological journey from childhood to adulthood? Something else entirely? Any of these interpretations, and others, is possible. Suffice it to say that Peake has created a unique and enthralling story and atmosphere, one that pulls the reader into a world strange and haunting, one that I would not have wanted to have missed."
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