Gormenghast (series) a year later with his "Earling" or formal investiture as the seventy-seventh Earl of Groan, after the untimely death of his father Sepulchrave. As Titus is only an infant in this novel, he plays a minor role. The main plot therefore follows the somewhat bizarre inhabitants of Gormenghast Castle, and in particular chronicles the rise to power of Steerpike, a scheming kitchen boy. Steerpike successfully destroys the existing order of the castle by inciting the twin sisters of Sepulchrave, Cora and Clarice, to burn Sepulchrave's beloved library. This event drives Sepulchrave into madness and eventually into taking his own life.
Maeve Gilmore "The Lost Book of Gormenghast". Reviewing "Titus Awakes", Michael Moorcock declared it "a fascinating, intensely personal homage", saying that Gilmore "successfully echoes the music of the originals, if not the eloquent precision of Peake's baroque style as she sends Titus on his adventure." Maeve Gilmore Maeve Patricia Mary Theresa Gilmore (14 June 1917 – 3 August 1983) was a British painter, sculptor and writer, and the wife of author Mervyn Peake. Gilmore was born in 1917 and brought up in Brixton, south London, where her father, Owen Eugene Gilmore (1862–1950), was a doctor. She was educated at a convent boarding