Description

The profoundly creative works of Mervyn Peake have fascinated readers for sixty years. His Gormenghast sequence of novels - recently serialized to great acclaim by the BBC - stands as one of the great imaginative accomplishments of twentieth-century literature. In The Voice of the Heart, G. Peter Winngington, the world's foremost expert on Peake, sets his subject's well-known fiction in context with the poetry, plays, and book illustrations for which Peake is equally lauded. He traces recurrent motifs through Peake's works (islands, animals, and loneliness, for example) and explores in detail Peake's long-neglected play, The Wit to Woo. Through close readings of all these elements of Peake's oeuvre, Winnington is ultimately able to offer unparalleled insight into the making of one of British literature's most vibrant imaginations.