The Voice of the Heart

The profoundly creative works of Mervyn Peake have fascinated readers for decades. 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 Winnington, the world’s foremost expert on Peake, explores his subject’s well-known fiction alongside the poetry, plays, and illustrations for which Peake is equally lauded. He traces recurrent motifs through Peake’s works and examines in detail his long-neglected play, The Wit to Woo. Through close readings of all these elements of Peake’s oeuvre, Winnington ultimately offers unparalleled insight into one of British literature’s most vibrant imaginations.