Thomas Love Peacock

Thomas Love Peacock
Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866) was an English novelist, poet, and satirist, best known for his humorous and satirical novels. His works often took the form of dialogues that parodied the intellectual discussions of his time, with novels like "Nightmare Abbey" and "Crotchet Castle" being prime examples. Peacock was a close friend of the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and their correspondence influenced his literary style. In addition to his novels, Peacock worked as a civil servant in the British East India Company for many years.

Author's Books:


INTRODUCTION Gryll Grange, the last and mellowest fruit from Peacock's tree, was, like most mellow fruit, not matured hastily. In saying this I do not refer to the long period—exactly a generation in the conventional sense—which intervened between Crotchet Castle of 1831 and this of 1861. For we know as a matter of fact, from the preface to the 1856 edition of Melincourt, that Peacock was... more...

I The Mail The ambiguous light of a December morning, peeping through the windows of the Holyhead mail, dispelled the soft visions of the four insides, who had slept, or seemed to sleep, through the first seventy miles of the road, with as much comfort as may be supposed consistent with the jolting of the vehicle, and an occasional admonition to remember the coachman, thundered through the open door,... more...

CHAPTER I Now come ye for peace here, or come ye for war?—SCOTT. "The abbot, in his alb arrayed," stood at the altar in the abbey-chapel of Rubygill, with all his plump, sleek, rosy friars, in goodly lines disposed, to solemnise the nuptials of the beautiful Matilda Fitzwater, daughter of the Baron of Arlingford, with the noble Robert Fitz-Ooth, Earl of Locksley and Huntingdon. The abbey of... more...

CHAPTER I Nightmare Abbey, a venerable family-mansion, in a highly picturesque state of semi-dilapidation, pleasantly situated on a strip of dry land between the sea and the fens, at the verge of the county of Lincoln, had the honour to be the seat of Christopher Glowry, Esquire. This gentleman was naturally of an atrabilarious temperament, and much troubled with those phantoms of indigestion which are... more...