Corrections and additions to
Complete Nonsense by Mervyn Peake

edited by R. W. Maslen and G. Peter Winnington

and published by Carcanet in July 2011

Corrections

Page 8 (Introduction): A sharp-eyed student, Ekaterina Shatalova, has pointed out that ‘a singing giraffe’ should of course read ‘a singing camel’.

Page 31: We have now had access to the MS of “Mr Slaughterboard” and found that the first two lines of the “Raft Song” should read

Pages 35 to 41: We have now had access to the MS of “The Dwarf of Battersea”. The Book of Nonsense source was erratic in reproducing the title page, but the only significant change was to the date: rather than “1937” Peake actually wrote “( ? )”. In the body of the poem, Peake had a comma in lines 1 and 3 of stanzas 10 (“His hair was dark, his lips were fat”) and 13 (“The dwarf turned white, but did as bid”), and gave capital letters to “the sacred pool” in stanza 18. More importantly, he wrote “But he has now ‘passed over’, see?” in line 4 of stanza 20, confirming our hypothesis that this might be a pun.

Page 140: The last word on the page should be “wool” rather than “wood” since it is lowered over the eyes of the Plumber. (Our thanks to Colin West for pointing this out.)

Page 181: The title should have “Undertakers” in the plural, thus: “Undertakers’ Song (1)” , and

Page 182: the same applies to “Undertakers’ Song (2)”.

Page 230: The note to “Manifold Basket’s Song” gives an incorrect page reference. It should be page 15 (and not 13) in Peake Studies vol. 11, no. 2 (April 2009).

Additions

None as yet.

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