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Headlong Hall / Nightmare Abbey
These two novels contain characters who are either representative types, or thinly veiled caricatures of Peacock's contemporaries, who gather in country houses to eat, drink and discuss. These tales poke fun at contemporary attitudes and ideas, such as the Romantic literary movement.
161 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1856
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About the author
Thomas Love Peacock
311 books61 followersThomas 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.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
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October 18, 2020
September 1, 2009
Many thanks to Bruce for recommending Nightmare Abbey. Here Peacock pokes fun at contemporary writers and poets(I'm not well-versed in the period, but recognised allusions to Coleridge. I understand Byron,Shelly and others are identifiable.) and their fans. There is verbosity and pomposity from literary and philosophical poseurs on all sides. Add in a love triangle and much hilarity ensues. I think this would be a great stage farce.
July 3, 2014
Nightmare Abbey is rated as a great book by the English. One of the "must read". These English must have been surveyed after a night of pub crawling. And Headlong Hall has only one redeeming virtue - brevity, the pain is quickly over.
October 14, 2024
Thomas Love Peacock was an early nineteenth-century satirist, but he was more of a satirist of the opinions and attitudes of his age than a moral or political satirist. While he does include comic portrayals of prominent figures of the time, he is less interested in their personal failings, and more in their beliefs and writings.
Headlong Hall is concerned with various philosophical posturings of the time. There is no story as such. Four visitors arrive at Headlong Hall and debate with one another. There are one or two comic mishaps, and a string of marriages at the end. None of this matters very much.
The main point of interest lies in our four debaters:
"Mr. Foster, the perfectibilian; Mr. Escot, the deteriorationist; Mr. Jenkins, the statu-quoite; and the Reverend Doctor Gaster, who though of course neither a philosopher nor a man of taste, had so won the Squire's fancy by a learned dissertation on the art of stuffing a turkey, that he concluded no Christmas party would be complete without him."
Foster advocates an optimistic view of human progress, in which every change makes the world better. Escot is the pessimist who sees everything around him as a sign of deterioration from the age when mankind was more natural. Jenkins hedges his bets by praising both sides. Dr Gaster offers naïve religious pieties.
In their different ways, all four men are wrong. Society neither constantly improves or declines. In some ways, each age is better, but it is worse in others and even the areas of improvement or decline may seesaw. However it is not as poised in the middle as Jenkins would have it, and quoting scripture as rigidly as Gaster is also foolishly narrow.
Peacock’s model for these discussions is Plato’s Symposium, but here there is no Socrates to steer the other men to the right answer. There are only wrong answers, presented by Peacock without comment.
I suspect Peacock has a sneaking sympathy for Escot’s pessimism, or perhaps I am projecting my own sympathy. Of course Escot is too absolute, but he does indicate serious problems in a changing society, some of which are identifiable today. Notably Peacock allows Escot to save a man’s life, and to present a skull that appears to prove Escot’s ideas without the story including any comical attempt to undermine Escot’s words.
Nightmare Abbey is felt to be the better of the two books but this might just be because Peacock is making fun of more familiar figures. The gloomy Scythrop who cannot choose between two women is a parody of Peacock’s friend, Percy Bysshe Shelley. A misanthropic poet, Mr Cypress, stands in for Byron, against whom Peacock had stronger feelings of hostility.
The most amusing send-up however is Mr Flosky, a pretentious version of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who is congenitally unable to give a simple answer to any statement. When one of the Scythrop’s admirers tries to press Flosky about Scythrop’s feelings, Flosky responds with an endless stream of erudite and utterly incomprehensible nonsense that leaves her no wiser.
There is no happy ending, but there is a comical twist, with the lovelorn and supposedly suicidal Scythrop calling for a gun and deciding he would rather have some Madeira instead.
Peacock’s prose is long-winded, and distractingly well-educated. He runs through a large number of literary allusions, some quoted in the original Greek. The targets of his satire are somewhat dated, which serves to blunt the edge of his comedy.
Nonetheless the two short works are mildly enjoyable. There is not much in the way of philosophy or literary criticism here but there are a few moments where Peacock may elicit laughter, even in the modern reader.
Headlong Hall is concerned with various philosophical posturings of the time. There is no story as such. Four visitors arrive at Headlong Hall and debate with one another. There are one or two comic mishaps, and a string of marriages at the end. None of this matters very much.
The main point of interest lies in our four debaters:
"Mr. Foster, the perfectibilian; Mr. Escot, the deteriorationist; Mr. Jenkins, the statu-quoite; and the Reverend Doctor Gaster, who though of course neither a philosopher nor a man of taste, had so won the Squire's fancy by a learned dissertation on the art of stuffing a turkey, that he concluded no Christmas party would be complete without him."
Foster advocates an optimistic view of human progress, in which every change makes the world better. Escot is the pessimist who sees everything around him as a sign of deterioration from the age when mankind was more natural. Jenkins hedges his bets by praising both sides. Dr Gaster offers naïve religious pieties.
In their different ways, all four men are wrong. Society neither constantly improves or declines. In some ways, each age is better, but it is worse in others and even the areas of improvement or decline may seesaw. However it is not as poised in the middle as Jenkins would have it, and quoting scripture as rigidly as Gaster is also foolishly narrow.
Peacock’s model for these discussions is Plato’s Symposium, but here there is no Socrates to steer the other men to the right answer. There are only wrong answers, presented by Peacock without comment.
I suspect Peacock has a sneaking sympathy for Escot’s pessimism, or perhaps I am projecting my own sympathy. Of course Escot is too absolute, but he does indicate serious problems in a changing society, some of which are identifiable today. Notably Peacock allows Escot to save a man’s life, and to present a skull that appears to prove Escot’s ideas without the story including any comical attempt to undermine Escot’s words.
Nightmare Abbey is felt to be the better of the two books but this might just be because Peacock is making fun of more familiar figures. The gloomy Scythrop who cannot choose between two women is a parody of Peacock’s friend, Percy Bysshe Shelley. A misanthropic poet, Mr Cypress, stands in for Byron, against whom Peacock had stronger feelings of hostility.
The most amusing send-up however is Mr Flosky, a pretentious version of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who is congenitally unable to give a simple answer to any statement. When one of the Scythrop’s admirers tries to press Flosky about Scythrop’s feelings, Flosky responds with an endless stream of erudite and utterly incomprehensible nonsense that leaves her no wiser.
There is no happy ending, but there is a comical twist, with the lovelorn and supposedly suicidal Scythrop calling for a gun and deciding he would rather have some Madeira instead.
Peacock’s prose is long-winded, and distractingly well-educated. He runs through a large number of literary allusions, some quoted in the original Greek. The targets of his satire are somewhat dated, which serves to blunt the edge of his comedy.
Nonetheless the two short works are mildly enjoyable. There is not much in the way of philosophy or literary criticism here but there are a few moments where Peacock may elicit laughter, even in the modern reader.
March 2, 2023
Could only read Headlong Hall as the cat urinated on the book before I could start Nightmare Abbey.
HH isn't particularly enjoyable though and I suspect I'm just 200 years out of place to understand whatever satire he was going for
HH isn't particularly enjoyable though and I suspect I'm just 200 years out of place to understand whatever satire he was going for
July 17, 2015
I've only read 'Nightmare Abbey' so far, unfortunately. Having read selected works of some of the Romantics lampooned in this satire, I suppose one appreciates the comedy better. Mr Flosky, as a parody of Coleridge, is not too bad at all. pp. 122 - 126 (this edition) really slags off Coleridge's leaning towards obscurantism and esoteric German systems of thought. For those who've read 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner' or perhaps 'Biographia Literaria', taking sides with Peacock is not fanciful or silly at all. And then we have a mockery of the melancholia so prevalent in the Romantics -- or so it seems to Peacock -- plus an attack on the public taste for the Gothic. The entire work is best appreciated by some knowledge of the Romantic movement, really, which is perhaps why -- ironically, in a way -- Peacock is little known today.
Edition wise, I don't believe there is a standard scholarly edition of Peacock's works, let alone a decent paperback published by the traditional semi-academic imprints (videlicet Penguin, Oxford, J. M. Dent Everyman, &c.), ergo the only choice really. Typical of Wordsworth Classics, there is just a short, anonymous introduction and a laconic biographical sketch. No other editorial matter, unfortunately. The type's rather small, which is not unexpected of a pence-for-paperbacks publisher like Wordsworth.
Edition wise, I don't believe there is a standard scholarly edition of Peacock's works, let alone a decent paperback published by the traditional semi-academic imprints (videlicet Penguin, Oxford, J. M. Dent Everyman, &c.), ergo the only choice really. Typical of Wordsworth Classics, there is just a short, anonymous introduction and a laconic biographical sketch. No other editorial matter, unfortunately. The type's rather small, which is not unexpected of a pence-for-paperbacks publisher like Wordsworth.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews