Gormenghast
core novel 1950 Gormenghast
Record
| First published | 1950 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.10 (15,363 ratings, collected 2026-09-14) |
| Page count | 505 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780749394820 |
| Internal chronology | 2 |
Synopsis
Gormenghast, the second novel in Mervyn Peake's Gothic fantasy series, follows Titus Groan, the seventy-seventh Earl of Groan, as he grows from age seven to seventeen within the vast, decaying castle that bears his family's rule, increasingly chafing against the endless, meaningless rituals his inherited title obliges him to perform. Meanwhile the ambitious kitchen boy Steerpike, having already climbed far beyond his origins, continues scheming his way up through the castle's rigid hierarchy, drawing several of Gormenghast's most vulnerable inhabitants into his orbit and leaving a trail of manipulation and quiet menace behind him. As Titus comes of age and Steerpike's ambitions grow bolder, the castle's fragile order edges closer to a reckoning neither of them can fully foresee.
Where it sits
- Universe: Gormenghast
- Series: The Gormenghast Novels core; position 2 of 3 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Mervyn Peake
Awards (verified)
- W.H. Heinemann Award, 1951: won; Royal Society of Literature award; the 1951 citation jointly names Gormenghast and The Glassblowers (a Peake poetry collection, outside this universe's scope).
Notes
- From the series record (The Gormenghast Novels): The three novels wholly written by Mervyn Peake (1946-1959), following Titus Groan, 77th Earl of Gormenghast, from birth in the vast ritual-bound castle to his flight from it. Canonical text of Titus Alone is the 1970 restoration edited by Langdon Jones from Peake's own manuscript: the 1959 first edition was heavily and clumsily cut in-house (whole chapters omitted, Peake's deliberate references to modern technology removed) while Peake was already incapacitated by the illness that killed him in 1968, the restoration recovers Peake's own text rather than adding other hands, per the established author-text fidelity rule.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.
- Reading order, within the series The Gormenghast Novels: position 2 of 3: previous Titus Groan (1946) · next Titus Alone (1959)
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gormenghast_(series)
- https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/peake_mervyn
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gormenghast_(novel)
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