Headlong Hall

Thomas Love Peacock

Jan 1816 · IndyPublish.com

About this eBook

Thomas Love Peacock (1785‒1866) is one of the most distinctive prose satirists of the Romantic period. The Cambridge Edition of the Novels of Thomas Love Peacock offers the first complete text of these works to appear for more than half a century. Headlong Hall (1816), Peacock's earliest work of dialogic and satirical fiction, was the most popular of his tales during his lifetime and considered his signature novel. An episodic plot and a country house setting provide the framework for a sparkling intellectual comedy that embraces music, gastronomy, philosophy, politics, craniology, painting, and landscape gardening. This edition supplies an authoritative text and a comprehensive introduction tracing the genesis, composition, publication, reception, and revision of the novel. Extensive explanatory notes throw light on the Welsh backdrop to the fiction as well as on the literary, political, social, and intellectual contexts of Peacock's innovative topical satire.

About the author

Thomas Love Peacock was born on October 18, 1785. He was largely self-educated and worked most of his life for the East India Company. During this time, he mastered Greek, Latin, Italian, French, and Welsh. He became chief examiner in 1836 and retired on a pension in 1856. He wrote seven novels during his lifetime including Headlong Hall, Melincourt, Nightmare Abbey, Crotchet Castle, and Gryll Grange. He died on January 23, 1866 at the age of 81 from injuries sustained in a fire in which he had attempted to save his library.