Boy in Darkness

Boy in Darkness is a novella written by Mervyn Peake. It was first published in 1956 by Eyre & Spottiswoode as part of the anthology Sometime, Never: Three Tales of Imagination (with other stories by William Golding and John Wyndham). A "corrupt" version of Boy in Darkness (a typist had misread Peake's handwriting in some places) was published both in an anthology, The Inner Landscape (published in 1969 by Allison & Busby, edited anonymously by Michael Moorcock), and separately in 1976 (by educational publisher Wheaton & Co.) with an introduction by Peake's widow, Maeve Gilmore. Referring to the corrupt text, she wrote that "although the Boy in Boy in Darkness is assuredly Titus Groan, [Peake] did not call him so by name"; however, adding the name Titus was one of the specific changes that Peake made between writing and publishing his novella. The correct text has recently become available again in an anthology entitled Boy in Darkness and Other Stories, with a foreword by Joanne Harris and a preface by Peake's son Sebastian, as well as Maeve Gilmore's uncorrected introduction from 1976. Upon publication of the work in 1956, a Glasgow Herald reviewer called it "completely hair-raising". Edwin Morgan referred to Boy in Darkness as a "very different" piece, "a nouvelle, a sinister epic incident, a reflection in miniature of Titus Groan and Gormenghast." The story is one of Mervyn Peake's last prose works. After this he wrote only Titus Alone (1959); by the time it was published, dementia had made writing almost impossible for him, although he continued to draw, intermittently, for several more years.