Mervyn Peake Biography

Mervyn Peake was an English modernist writer, artist, poet, and illustrator. He is best known for a series of novels he originally conceived as a lengthy cycle following a protagonist from cradle to grave, though the unfinished cycle is now commonly but erroneously referred to as a trilogy. His surreal fiction was influenced by an early love for Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson. In addition to novels, he also wrote poetry, short stories for adults and children, and stage and radio plays.