Titus Groan / Gormenghast / Titus Alone
Published by Penguin / Methuen / Vintage. Titus Groan, 1946, 506 pages. Gormenghast, 1950, 511 pages. Titus Alone, 1959; revised version published in 1970, 263 pages.

“Gormenghast.
“Withdrawn and ruinous, it broods in umbra: the immemorial masonry: the towers, the tracts. Is all corroding? No. Through an avenue of spires a zephyr floats; a bird whistles; a freshet bears away from a choked river. Deep in a fist of stone a doll’s hand wriggles, warm rebellious on the frozen palm. A shadow shifts its length. A spider stirs…
“And darkness winds between the characters.”

Gormenghast. A stone castle, vast, a world unto itself.

Ruled over by Lord Sepulchrave Groan, a melancholy earl, Gormenghast is home to a host of strange characters, each larger than life. The Countess Gertrude, a statuesque woman with red hair who is followed by an endless train of white cats wherever she goes; Fuchsia, the daughter in her crimson dress, living in her own world; the twins, Cora and Clarice, the Earl’s sisters, who resent the countess and think they should be ruling in her place; and the newly born Titus, future Earl of Gormenghast.

The castle’s life is regimented, run on a constant (and fairly pointless) schedule of rituals. These are dictated by Sourdust, Master of the Rituals and Keeper of the Law of the Groans, and after his death, by his son Barquentine.

Into this world comes Steerpike, a ruthless, wildly ambitious and manipulative kitchen boy. Steerpike manoeuvres his way out of the kitchen, which is presided over by the enormous, sadistic Swelter (arch-enemy of Mr. Flay, the Earl’s man) and into the lives of the family. Steerpike is the catalyst that will shake this regimented world to its core as he makes his inexorable way upwards.

Steerpike starts to eliminate his enemies and anyone who stands in his way: quite literally. He plays to weakness, feeding on the twins’ sense of denied entitlement, and Fuchsia’s rebellious streak. But there are those who do not trust him: Flay, for example, who is eventually banished. The Countess, who seems to live in her private world, with her birds and cats, comes into her own when Gormenghast is threatened, both by heavy rains and by the kitchen boy. And Titus, who becomes Steerpike’s nemesis.

Steerpike is the perfect catalyst—an aberrant presence who collides with the predictable, regimented life of Gormenghast. He is clever, unstoppable and determined to get what he wants at any cost. He manipulates, lies, plots, and kills his way until he gets very close to his goal.

Mervyn Peake fills his world with outrageous characters: Dr. Prunesquallor, who tends to break out in high-pitched laughter but is clever and perceptive and a good friend; Irma, his vain sister, who is determined to find herself a husband; and Bellgrove, the headmaster of the school Titus goes to, an absent-minded man who becomes a father figure to young Titus.

Titus Groan takes the story from the birth of the young Earl to the death of Lord Sepulchrave, and the rise of Steerpike. Gormenghast picks up the story: Titus is growing up and chafing against the restrictions that Gormenghast places on him as the 77th Earl. Meanwhile, Steerpike attempts to consolidate his power and take over Gormenghast: an ambition that eventually pits him against Titus. Titus Alone follows the young Earl after his abdication and his journey into a world that has never heard of Gormenghast. 

The world-building is impeccable—Gormenghast is the most important character in the books, even the last one, dominating it by its absence. The series is classed under fantasy, although there is, strictly speaking, no magic or magic realism in the books. But the characters and the world of Gormenghast are so strange that it feels like fantasy. Gormenghast itself is so vivid that it stayed in my head even when I wasn’t reading the books.

Mervyn Peake’s writing is often brilliant. The chapters towards the end of Gormenghast that describe the incessant rain and the resulting deluge are so well-written that I could feel the damp and the rising waters.

“On every floor an abandoned conglomeration was left behind, for the climbing water to despoil. The armoury was a red pond of rust. A score of libraries were swamps of pulp. … The crevices in wood or brick and tiny caves between the stones of the innumerable walls had been swilled free of the complexity of insect life. Where generations of lizards had lived in secrecy there was only water now. Water that rose like terror, inch by clammy inch.”

There are passages that sometimes seem a bit unwieldy, especially in Gormenghast, when the chapters on the teachers in Titus’s school feel unnecessarily detailed, and I couldn’t see the point of giving them all that attention. But as the book goes on, it becomes clear that they have a role to play in the story.

Titus Alone, although atmospheric, is the weakest of the books. Titus is lost in a world without Gormenghast: his home that he hated and wanted to escape, but could not get away from. It is always with him, and he misses it desperately.

Peake wrote Titus Alone towards the end of his life, during the onset of dementia. The book was first published in 1959 but it was then discovered that this version was incomplete. It was revised by Langdon Jones based on Peake’s notes, and a fuller version was published in 1970, after Peake’s death.

There has been discussion about why the Gormenghast trilogy never reached the popularity of J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings. Both were written within years of each other, after the Second World War when people needed fantasy and escape. Tolkein’s saga is about the battle between good and evil, but Peake’s story is less clearly defined. It can be seen as an attempt to upend a system that has survived centuries, one that everyone assumes will continue to do so. But even Gormenghast cannot last forever. Because of the actions of Steerpike and Titus, it can never go back to being the same again. Much like the world after the war.

This is a brilliant series, illustrated by Peake. I first read the books in the late 1980s, and enjoyed them even more when I reread them recently. If you haven’t discovered the trilogy yet, I would definitely recommend reading the first two books and—if you like—the third.

You will be transported to a strange and wonderful world, a world that will linger with you.