Mervyn Peake was an English writer, artist, poet, and illustrator. He is the author of the Gormenghast novels and four collections of poems published during his lifetime: The Glassblowers, Poems & Drawings, A Reverie of Bone, and Shapes & Sounds. Robert Maslen is a senior lecturer at the University of Glasgow and the editor of Collected Poems: Mervyn Peake. G. Peter Winnington is the author of Mervyn Peake's Vast Alchemies: The Illustrated Biography and the edior of the periodical Peake Studies.