Question: Who was born first, Mervyn Peake or Melissa Bank?
Context: Gormenghast is a fictional castle of titanic proportions that features prominently in a series of fantasy works penned by Mervyn Peake.  It is the setting for the first two books in the Gormenghast series, "Titus Groan" and "Gormenghast".  It incorporates many of the elements of both medieval castles and Regency period stately homes, though in practice it operates like a small city-state.  It has its own government, a Byzantine system of laws and rituals, a rigid class system, and is seemingly self-sufficient.  The castle is home to the ancient House of Groan who have, as the Earls of Groan, ruled for centuries without anything changing. Titus Alone is a novel written by Mervyn Peake and first published in 1959.  It is the fourth work in the Gormenghast series.  The other works in the series are "Titus Groan", "Gormenghast", the novella "Boy in Darkness", and the fragment "Titus Awakes".  It was re-edited by Langdon Jones in 1970 using more of the original manuscript. 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" was published both in an anthology, "The Inner Landscape" (1969), and separately in 1976 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. Gormenghast is a four-episode television serial based on the first two novels of the Gothic fantasy Gormenghast series by Mervyn Peake.  It was produced and broadcast by the BBC. Melissa Bank (born in 1961 in Philadelphia) is an American author.  She has published two books, "The Wonder Spot" a volume of short stories, and "The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing," a novel, which have been translated into over 30 languages.  Bank was the winner of the 1993 Nelson Algren Award for short fiction.  She currently teaches in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton. Gormenghast is a fantasy series by British author Mervyn Peake, about the inhabitants of Castle Gormenghast, a sprawling, decaying, gothic-like structure.  Originally conceived as a single on-going novel, the series was ended by Peake's death and comprises three novels, "Titus Groan" (1946), "Gormenghast" (1950), "Titus Alone" (1959) and a novella, "Boy in Darkness" (1956), whose canonical status is debated.  Peake was writing a fourth novel, "Titus Awakes" at the time of his death, which was later completed and released by Peake's widow in 2009. Mervyn Laurence Peake (9 July 1911 – 17 November 1968) was an English writer, artist, poet, and illustrator.  He is best known for what are usually referred to as the "Gormenghast" books.  The three works were part of what Peake conceived as a lengthy cycle, the completion of which was prevented by his death.  They are sometimes compared to the work of his older contemporary J. R. R. Tolkien, but his surreal fiction was influenced by his early love for Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson rather than Tolkien's studies of mythology and philology. Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor is a darkly humorous children's picture book written and illustrated by the British author Mervyn Peake and published by Country Life in 1939.  It was his first published work.  The story concerns the nautical exploits of the titular captain and his rambunctious crew aboard their ship "The Black Tiger".  After some episodic adventures they capture a small humanoid, referred to only as the Yellow Creature, with whom Slaughterboard develops a strange platonic infatuation.  His loyal crew gradually fall prey to misadventure and the book ends with the Captain and the Yellow Creature forsaking piracy for fishing on the creature's pink island.  The book is notable for Peake's poetic style and his fine illustrations of the many fantastical beasts on the island. Titus Groan is a novel by Mervyn Peake.  It is the first novel in the "Gormenghast" series. Ernest Cromwell Peake (18 August 1874 – 24 December 1950) was an English Missionary of the London Missionary Society who worked in China, from 1899 to 1922.  He was the first medical missionary to work in Hengchow (Hengzhou, modern Hengyang), in Hunan Province, China where he set up a clinic and dispensary.  He was also appointed head of the Mackenzie Memorial Hospital in Tianjin, China in 1912.  Peake was known for teaching Chinese locals about medicine, and for being one of the first missionaries to bring modern medical techniques to China.  He was the father of Mervyn Peake, the writer and poet.
Answer: Mervyn Laurence Peake