Editing Titus Alone
In 1970 Penguin produced an edition of the Titus Groan trilogy which included a re-editing of the last book, Titus Alone. The editing was done by author Langdon Jones, who has kindly allowed me to reproduce his own account of how this came about:
I used to work on a magazine in London with Michael Moorcock. Mike was always trying to get me to read the books, telling me how much I would enjoy them. You know how it is when people do that - it just puts you off. So in fact it was some time before I finally opened the pages of Titus Alone. Of course, once I got into the second chapter I was completely hooked!
So Mike and I were both evangelising about Peake (at that time he was virtually unknown). In 1967 I wrote a review of a small book of his poems which came out at that time, and put it in the context of his whole oeuvre. I then received a letter from Maeve, thanking me for the review, and telling me that she had taken a copy to the residential nursing home where Mervyn was staying, and had read it to him. She said that 'he had got something good from it' although by then he was in a bad way.
So I subsequently met Maeve and the rest of the family, and it was during one of those meetings that I mentioned Titus Alone, and Maeve told me about the background to that edition. She showed me one of the typescripts, and it was clear that much of the book had been lost. Also, even from such a cursory look, it became clear that some of the faults of Titus Alone which I had attributed to Mervyn's illness, were actually due to careless editing.
So I asked Maeve if I could have a go at restoring the book, and she was very happy for me to do so, and proved to be very helpful during the process.
At that time she invited me to visit Mervyn, but I declined, because it would have been too upsetting to see him in that condition. I hadn't known him as a man, just as the creator of Gormenghast, and it was this part of him that had been destroyed. So in the event I never met him.
Once the restoration had been made, the publishers accepted it only unwillingly, presumably because of the implied criticism of their original editors. They didn't wish to pay me for my work (which I didn't mind, because I hadn't done it for money) but subsequently made a (very) token payment after pressure from Maeve. And also they edited my foreword in such a way that it gave a false impression of the extent of the new material.
Actually, I felt quite sorry for the original editors. Now, because of the importance of the book, we can accept some of the problems that come with it. At the time it was published, they had a book by an author who was obscure and eccentric, and they felt that they had to lick it into shape so that it would end up as a coherent and readable story. I think that in the event they made some very poor decisions (in a couple of places the original version is nonsensical) but they would never have seen the future importance of the book, and the scrutiny it would undergo.
It was a wonderful period, working on the book, and I have many happy memories associated with it. In particular I remember one day, at a time when I still had trouble reading Mervyn's handwriting, when Maeve was dictating to me a handwritten section of the book dealing with the party at Lady Cusp-Canine's, which was totally new to me. I was typing away as fast as I could while she was dictating, and every now and then she would snort with laughter, and my fingers would get tangled up, and we would have to pause to collect ourselves until we could continue.
I do count myself as being extraordinarily privileged to have worked on the book, and I suppose that I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.