Steerpike Steerpike Steerpike is a fictional character in Mervyn Peake's novels "Titus Groan" and "Gormenghast". Steerpike might be called the antagonist of the Gormenghast trilogy, but in truth he is more of an anti-hero; the first book for example is largely focused on him, only covering the first year of the eponymous hero Titus's life. Steerpike could also be considered an archetypal Machiavellian schemer: a highly intelligent, ruthless character willing to justify any and all means to reach his end. In the books, Mervyn Peake describes his personality as follows: if ever he had harboured a conscience in his tough narrow
Maeve Gilmore Alone", the third novel in his series of Titus books, following "Titus Groan" (1946), and "Gormenghast" (1950), only with difficulty. When published in 1959 "Titus Alone" was less polished than he might have wished, but he was beyond correcting it. He had always planned a longer series, taking his hero up to his forties at least. On his death from Parkinson's disease in November 1968, Peake left a few pages of notes for a fourth book, of which fewer than a thousand words are legible. During the 1970s, Gilmore worked on the fourth Titus book herself, inspired partly by the