Editing Mervyn Peake (section)

===Declining health===
He was showing unmistakable early symptoms of dementia, for which he was given [[electroconvulsive therapy]], to little avail. Over the next few years he gradually lost the ability to draw steadily and quickly, although he still managed to produce some drawings with the help of his wife. Among his last completed works were the illustrations for [[Honoré de Balzac|Balzac]]'s ''[[Les Cent Contes drolatiques|Droll Stories]]'' (1961) and for his own poem ''The Rhyme of the Flying Bomb'' (1962), which he had written some 15 years earlier.

''[[Titus Alone]]'' was published in 1959 and was revised in 1970 by Langdon Jones, an editor of ''[[New Worlds (magazine)|New Worlds]]'', to remove apparent inconsistencies introduced by the publisher's careless editing. Jones, also a composer, set ''The Rhyme of the Flying Bomb'' to music.  A 1995 edition of all three completed Gormenghast novels includes a very short fragment of the beginning of what would have been the fourth Gormenghast novel, ''[[Titus Awakes]]'', as well as a listing of events and themes he wanted to address in that and later Gormenghast novels.