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When I was 15, years before they'd even thought of having a book festival in Hay-on-Wye, I was hunting around the secondhand bookshops of that town for first editions of my new hero, Mervyn Peake. I was lucky enough to be helped by Richard Booth (the "King of Hay" himself), who remarked sadly that he didn't have any of the books in stock; that it was, in fact, the off-Peake season. The trouble is, it's always been the off-Peake season.
Why is it that the three books usually (and according to experts incorrectly) named the Gormenghast trilogy never achieved the level of success of that notable fantasy behemoth, The Lord of the Rings? I am not suggesting that the two works should be viewed as counterparts, and yet in very different ways they are two cornerstones of fantasy writing in the second half of the 20th century. One is universally known by anyone who's ever become a reader; I'm lucky if I find one person who has even heard of the other in any given audience of two hundred or more.
It is too simplistic to say that perhaps Tolkien's books are, simply, "better" than Peake's. Many critics would in any case disagree, with many of Peake's greatest supporters – such as Michael Moorcock and Anthony Burgess – being writers themselves. Is Peake perhaps one of those influential figures: the writers' writer?
I once asked the late Sebastian Peake, eldest son of Mervyn, how he viewed the Tolkien-but-not-Peake question, and why he thought his father had never achieved the former's level of greatness. To the first question, Sebastian gave me the answer that Peake's publisher once gave: that whereas Tolkien stood on the mountain top, directing his forces on the plains beneath him, Peake was down on the battlefield, in the trenches, eye to eye with his troops. As for the question of success; his answer was simpler. Peake was "too good". That may be the answer of a faithful son, and one that is impossible to evaluate, but I do think that Peake was out of the starting gate too soon. Titus Groan, the first book of the series, was published in 1946, a full eight years before The Fellowship of the Ring appeared.
It's important to remember the world in which these books were published; in particular, the Britain into which they were born. The war had barely ended; with the myopia of today we sometimes mistakenly think of that time as one of street parties and victory celebrations. These things came and went very rapidly; what was left was rationing that continued in one form or another until 1950, and, if you read contemporary reports, a populace that was a rather strange combination of stunned and bored. There is no question that Britain was ready for some exciting flights of fantasy; I just think Peake was there too soon. By the early 1950s, we were in a different place; as Simon Winder points out in The Man Who Saved Britain, much of the reason that James Bond arrived in such spectacular style in 1953 was that we needed some heroic escapism, and the Lord of the Rings no doubt benefitted from that new mood too.
Titus Groan was ahead of its time. Furthermore it was, and remains, very, very strange indeed. This was why it blew me away at the age of 15 – I had never read anything so weird, and I loved it for that. This perhaps too has been part of its love/hate struggle with the literary world; for some people it is just too peculiar, but even those that may like it may never come across it simply because it defies classification and easy journalism. The usual term for it is "gothic fantasy", and though that's a useful enough shorthand, it does pigeonhole the work somewhat, which can be limiting, especially when it's a pigeonhole with nothing else in it.
That's a shame, because there is such splendour to be found in Peake's most important work; there is darkness, yes, but there is also gentleness, humour, pathos, beauty, tragedy and a love of the written word, and how it can elucidate human nature, that means Peake deserves a wider readership. He defies categorisation, and yet, whether they be a major figure like Dickens or an obscure one like HP Lovecraft; the number of their fans is not what makes them classic; it is the depth of their gift.
• Marcus Sedgwick will give a workshop on Gormenghast at Edinburgh international book festival on Thursday August 21.
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