The Works Of Thomas Love Peacock: Including His Novels, Poems, Fugitive Pieces, Criticisms, Etc

by Thomas Love Peacock

The Works Of Thomas Love Including His Novels, Poems, Fugitive Pieces, Criticisms, Etc by Thomas Love Peacock. This excerpt assembles Peacock's satirical trilogy—Headlong Hall's opening, Melincourt (including its conclusion), and Nightmare Abbey—through rapid dialogue, comic set pieces, and caustic social observation. It surveys what it means to be human, most notably through Sir Oran Haut-ton, an orang-utan raised among Africans who is argued by some to belong to humanity, challenging assumptions about language, culture, and civilization. The book ridicules politics, aristocratic pretensions, and the abuse of influence via a chorus of hosts, politicians, poets, and dilettantes, ranging from Forester and Fax to Grovelgrub, Anthelia Melincourt, and Desmond. Scenes move from Redrose Abbey and Melincourt Castle to coastlines and political contingencies in Onevote and Novote, interleaving social satire with debates on truth, marriage, wealth, and virtue. Nightmare Abbey opens with Scythrop Glowry and Marionetta O’Carroll in a parallel circle where philosophy and longing collide, lampooning Romantic pretensions and the theater of intellect.

452 pages, Paperback

First published August 27, 2010

About the author

Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866) was an English novelist and poet. For most of his life, Peacock worked for the East India Co. He was a close friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley, who greatly inspired his writing. His best verse is interspersed in his novels, which are dominated by the conversations of their characters and satirize the intellectual currents of the day. His best-known work, Nightmare Abbey (1818), satirizes romantic melancholy and includes characters based on Shelley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Lord Byron.