Headlong Hall

Headlong Hall
Author: Thomas Love Peacock
Publisher: Cambridge Edition of the Novels of Thomas Love Peacock 7 Volume Set
Total Pages: 469
Release: 2022-06-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1107030730

Peacock's first novel is situated within its literary and historical contexts via a substantial introduction, generous notes, and annotated appendices.

Nightmare Abbey

Nightmare Abbey
Author: Thomas Love Peacock
Publisher: Broadview Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2007-04-09
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1770482008

This 1818 novel is set in a former abbey whose owner, Christopher Glowry, is host to visitors who enjoy his hospitality and engage in endless debate. Among these guests are figures recognizable to Peacock’s contemporaries, including characters based on Lord Byron and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Mr. Glowry’s son Scythrop (also modeled on a famous Romantic, Peacock’s friend Percy Bysshe Shelley) locks himself up in a tower where he reads German tragedies and transcendental philosophy and develops a “passion for reforming the world.” Disappointed in love, a sorrowful Scythrop decides the only thing to do is to commit suicide, but circumstances persuade him to instead follow his father in a love of misanthropy and Madeira. In addition to satire and comic romance, Nightmare Abbey presents a biting critique of the texts we view as central to British romanticism. This Broadview edition includes a critical introduction and a range of illuminating contemporary documents on the novel’s reception and its German and British literary contexts. A selection of Peacock’s critical and autobiographical writings is also included.