PEAKE (Mervyn, 1911-1968, Writer, Artist, Poet and Illustrator)

Fine Autograph Letter Signed "Mervyn" to his old friend [Helene] Lanie Bruce "Lanie Darling" starting "What kind of a so & so have you decided that I am by now! The worst kind I'm afraid. How lovely it would be to meet again. Is there an earthly chance. Do write again soon, darling. I remember our last meeting with so much excitement. I've tried 5 publishers with your stories, but they all think they are too slight. I rather agree in a way - although I know they are for toddlers (never used that word before! urggh!) If you could write something with a bit more body to it, or a bit fiercer, I think it would go down better. Nevertheless I'll go on trying & maybe you'll prove the publishers and me, wrong, I hope so. Of course I'll do drawings for you if I can get a publisher to take it. Darling sweet Lanie, I would like to be with you. Your adoring cousin ...", 2 sides 8vo.,Smarden, nr Ashford, Kent, 7th January

Peake returned from Sark in 1936 and was commissioned to design the sets and costumes for The Insect Play and his work was acclaimed in The Sunday Times. He also began teaching life drawing at Westminster School of Art where he met the painter Maeve GILMORE (1917-1983, Painter, Sculptor and Writer) whom he married in 1937. They had three children, Sebastian (1940–2012), Fabian (b. 1942), and Clare (b. 1949). He worked at Trafalgar Studios for some years in the 1940s.
Letters from Helene Bruce to both Mervyn and Maeve Peake can be found in the Mervyn Peake archive at the British Library.
The Peakes lived at The Grange, Smarden in the early 1950s, a Georgian house which they had bought for £6,000. They had trouble keeping up the loan repayments and eventually sold it at a loss.
He is best known for what are usually referred to as the Gormenghast books. The three works were part of what Peake conceived as a lengthy cycle, the completion of which was prevented by his death. They are sometimes compared to the work of his older contemporary J. R. R. Tolkien, but Peake's surreal fiction was influenced by his early love for Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson rather than Tolkien's studies of mythology and philology.
Letters from Peake are uncommon as he died at the age of 67 after suffering from dementia for the last years of his life.


Item Date:  1952

Stock No:  40691      £650

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