Ride a cock-horse and other nursery rhymes

by Mervyn Peake

Hardcover - 1st reissued 1972 edition. Light tanning and shelfwear to the jacket (unclipped) and hardcover. The spine is a little bumped and cocked. The binding is sound; all text and illustrations are clear. CM

Genres: Poetry

33 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1940

About the author

Mervyn Laurence Peake was an English modernist writer, artist, poet and illustrator. He is best known for what are usually referred to as the Gormenghast books, though the Titus books would be more accurate: the three works that exist were the beginning of what Peake conceived as a lengthy cycle, following his protagonist Titus Groan from cradle to grave, but Peake's untimely death prevented completion of the cycle, which is now commonly but erroneously referred to as a trilogy. They are sometimes compared to the work of his older contemporary J.R.R. Tolkien, but his surreal fiction was influenced by his early love for Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson rather than Tolkien's studies of mythology and philology.

Peake also wrote poetry and literary nonsense in verse form, short stories for adults and children ("Letters from a Lost Uncle"), stage and radio plays, and Mr Pye, a relatively tightly-structured novel in which God implicitly mocks the evangelical pretensions and cosy world-view of the eponymous hero.

Peake first made his reputation as a painter and illustrator during the 1930s and 1940s, when he lived in London, and he was commissioned to produce portraits of well-known people. A collection of these drawings is still in the possession of his family. Although he gained little popular success in his lifetime, his work was highly respected by his peers, and his friends included Dylan Thomas and Graham Greene. His works are now included in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery and the Imperial War Museum.

Reviews

[Philip Dodd · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like the strange world of Nursery Rhymes and the drawings of Mervyn Peake, so I bought Ride a Cock Horse and Other Nursery Rhymes with illustrations by Mervyn Peake, and I am very glad I did. Even readers who feel they are too old for Nursery Rhymes would enjoy this book. Ever since I first read Titus Groan, Gormenghast and Titus Alone by Mervyn Peake when I was a teenager in the 1960's, I have admired his unique vision and prose style, and I have liked the drawings he did for his own books and for books like The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Ride a Cock Horse is the kind of book I can imagine being read by Titus Groan or Irma Prunesquallor in the tower rooms of the castle called Gormenghast, for the drawings come from the mind of their creator. They are wonderful drawings, illustrating some of my favourite Nursery Rhymes, like Ride a Cock Horse, Little Jack Horner and Jack Sprat. Fairy tales are not just for children nor are nursery rhymes, but this book is about the illustrations, which is why I bought it, as I wrote earlier. I liked in particular Mervyn Peake's illustration for Old King Cole and the one of a boy, looking over a wall,for I Saw a Ship A-Sailing, which could well be Titus Groan looking out from the walls of Gormenghast. Anyone who appreciates fine book illustrations would like this book, whether they feel too old for Nursery Rhymes or not.

[Sem · Rating 4 out of 5]

More or less as sinister as one would expect from Peake. I loved the illustration for 'I had a little husband, no bigger than my thumb.' The best kind of husband.