Vast Alchemies: The Life and Work of Mervyn Peake [Hardcover]

G. Peter Winnington (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 31, 1999

This book is the result of twenty-five years of research into Peake's life and work. It follows Peake, the son of missionary parents, from China to art school in London and his time in an artists' colony in the Channel Islands. It covers in detail his experiences in the army during the Second World War - an unhappy period during which he wrote Titus Groan and the huge influence that his visit to the newly liberated concentration camp at Belsen had on his work. The next ten years of his life were without doubt his most productive but by the mid-1950s he was beginning to show signs of the degenerative illness that eventually killed him in 1968. Previously published in hardback in 1999, this radically revised edition examines the novels, poems, illustrations, and plays and discusses how Peake's life and experiences were channeled through his unique imagination into his work.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

G. Peter Winnington is the founder of Peake Studies, devoted to the work of Mervyn Peake and known as the leading authority on the writer and artist.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 270 pages
• Publisher: Peter Owen Ltd (December 31, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0720610796
• ISBN-13: 978-0720610796
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,227,397 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A "must" for all Mervyn Peake scholars and fans!, September 8, 2000

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vast Alchemies: The Life and Work of Mervyn Peake (Hardcover)

This book, a critical biography of the multi-faceted writer and illustrator, Mervyn Peake, is written by the longtime editor of Peake Studies, a British journal. Winnington, with at least 20 articles or edited works to his name, has made a lifework of Peake. Other effects of this effort can be seen on the Peake Studies website, which he maintains at: <http://www.unil.ch/angl/docs/peake-st/>. His is one of the two major journals dedicated to this influential 20th century fantasy author. The other is the Mervyn Peake Review, also British.

Mr. Winnington's considerable research into Peake's life and works are evident in as he quotes extensively from other biographical and bibliographical works such as John Watney's Mervyn Peake (NY: USA Saint Martin's Press,1976), the reminiscences of Peake's wife, Maeve Gilmore. A World Away: Memoir of Mervyn Peake. London, Gollancz, 1970, but also from The Fantasts by T. E. Grahame Little, Avebury; January 1984 and Peake's own collection of fiction, poetry and drawings, Peake's Progress: Selected Writings and Drawings of Mervyn Peake, ed. Maeve Gilmore. Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press, 1981. While he quotes from critical works and from Peake's own work and publicly available papers, he also carefully integrates details from the author's artistic and dramatic endeavors into his discussion. Artistic education, gallery and private artistic shows, failed and successful illustrating and joint endeavors, and work as an illustrator are integrated into a picture of the writer which nevertheless focuses on his written work as his major accomplishment.

The book is divided into sections corresponding to Peake's biography and beginning with a little history of his parents before his birth, which was in Kuling, China in 1911. The sections are: I. China 1898-1922, II. Education 1923-1934, III. Making a Reputation , 1935-1939, IV. The Golden Decade, 1940-1949, which is the longest section, and V. The Losing Struggle, 1950-1968. This serves to ground Winnington's critical commentary, which, in any chapter, can and often does refer to the entire body of Peake's work.

This book should not be seen as a definitive biography of Peake. Watney's book still holds that place.Winnington, on the other hand, has added to the body of knowledge on this complex author through his critical observations. Most effective are his linking of experiences in China and during World War II with key plot or character elements in the Titus series and key visual pastiches from his creation of the Gormenghast world if prose and in illustration. For example, in describing his early years, Winnington states, "Parallels between the early life of the Boy Emperor [of China] and Titus groan, as recounted in the first two of Mervyn's novels, are numerous and striking."(p. 31). He pursues this insight through three paragraphs at the end of the first Chapter on Peake's parents. I agree with commentators on this work that Vast Alchemies makes up in observation, critical insight, detail and sheer mass of research for what it lakes in access to papers of the Peake estate.

Since Winnington refers to these early years, from birth to age 11, repeatedly throughout the work, one is easily lead towards parallels with Paul Linebarger/Cordwainer Smith who was also raised in China and heavily influenced by the experience. Both seem to have used their twice-born quality, the unreality of existing in two such different cultures as China and the West, to flesh out unreal worlds (Gormenghast and Nostralia), and both were involved in WW II, but Peake's artistic bent drew him to pursue creativity over any other career path and Linebarger's politics and education both ensured that he would be involved in more global, if secretive, activities.

Perhaps because this critic is so intimately acquainted with everything written by and about Peake, his own writing is not as rigorously controlled as one might expect. He tends to jump from observation to observation, some about Peake's life, others about his writing or illustration stylistics. The book is charming for this quality, in that it preserves a anecdotal flavor that improves its status as a casual reading project. It is correspondingly disappointing for the lack of rigor of its critical perspectives. Very much a story about Peake's accomplishments within in the context of a somewhat romanticized life, it's critical perspective is not systematic, but at the same time, it is also not predictable.

I would recommend that this book be in ANY collection purporting to deal with English Language fantasy, and also that it be bought by public as well as academic libraries. For serious scholars of Peake, it should be read along with Watney's book, which is stylistically a much more standard critical biography. And it should be cherished for its periodization of Peake's life, its extensive primary and secondary bibliography focusing solely on the author but on the author as a writer, illustrator, dramatist and family man, and its accessibility.

Jan Bogstad, Reviewer

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The mind and art behind the 'Titus' books, May 29, 2000

By 

Jeff Bursey - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vast Alchemies: The Life and Work of Mervyn Peake (Hardcover)

G. Peter Winnington, in this new, enjoyable biography of Mervyn Peake, faced the challenge, as he states in the preface, of writing without the benefit of much estate permission. This normally would be a drawback, but the book rises above the constictions the Peake family imposed.

It should not be thought Vast Alchemies was meant to be a scandalous expose of Peake's life. When it does discuss the sundry affairs of this relatively little-known artist's life, it does so economically and sensitively. While Winnington is regretful that Peake's own words are not allowed to be used, this inadvertently, and thankfully, ensures that Winnington's own voice and ideas come across strongly. It is a tribute to the author that with this freedom he never positions himself as superior to his subject.

The book is admirably short (however much one admires or loves Peake, he does not demand a multi-volume Life), compact and open-ended, in that the critical apparatus at work does not shut down further examination of Peake's artistic expression. Winnington is admirably clear in his prose (unfortunately, a few typos throw off concentration), and his depth of knowledge is lightly handled. Through investigation, he has removed some mystery and misconceptions about Peake's life. Vast Alchemies is a very readable biography, and at the same time an overdue contribution to Peake scholarship, accessible and interesting to those unfamiliar and familiar with this too neglected artist.