Headlong Hall

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

Thomas Love Peacock (Author), Nicholas A. Joukovsky (Edited by)

9781107030732, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 30 June 2022

446 pages
22.3 x 14.4 x 3 cm, 0.68 kg

'With their meticulous notes, rigorous documentation of textual variants and generous contextual appendices (including two unperformed, unpublished farces that Peacock drew on for Headlong Hall), these fine new volumes in the Cambridge Edition of the Novels of Thomas Love Peacock get us closer than ever to the nuances of his satire.' Thomas Keymer, the Times Literary Supplement

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.

General Editor's preface
Chronology
Introduction
Headlong Hall
Appendix A. Peacock's Preface of 1837
Appendix B. The Dilettanti (1812–13)
Appendix C. The Three Doctors (1812–13)
Appendix D. A Revised Text of the Headlong 'Chorus'
Note on the text
Emendations and variants
Ambiguous line-end hyphenations
Explanatory notes
Select bibliography.

Subject Areas: Classic fiction [pre c 1945 FC], Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD], Literary studies: general [DSB]