Nightmare Abbey

The first fully comprehensive scholarly edition of Thomas Love Peacock's third novel, Nightmare Abbey (1818).

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

9781107031869, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 22 December 2016

430 pages, 4 b/w illus.
22.3 x 14.6 x 2.6 cm, 0.65 kg

'Nightmare Abbey excels in tracking the composition through Spring 1818 … A variety of sources, including anecdotal evidence, are similarly used to recreate the immediate critical response … offering valuable commentary on prototypes of the novel's satiric figures, generic and personal … In a final section on 'Afterlife', the editor convincingly attributes a shift in fortunes in the popularity of this title to the growth of English literature as an academic subject … a remarkable achievement in elucidating Peacock's 'fine wit' for present and future readers.' Peter Garside, Peacock edition

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 his novels to appear for more than half a century. Nightmare Abbey (1818), Peacock's third novel, is a spirited satire that shows Peacock to be a perceptive observer and engaged critic of the literary and political preoccupations of his time. While the novel has often been characterized in popular culture either as a burlesque of the Gothic novel or a mere spoof of Romantic gloom and doom, this edition recognizes it as a purposeful critique of Romanticism. Explanatory notes illustrate the ways in which several characters are caricatures of prominent Romantic writers, including Peacock's close friend Shelley as well as Coleridge and Byron, and also identify the various sources, some previously unsuspected, from which Peacock created their dialogue.

General editor's preface
Chronology
Introduction
Nightmare Abbey
Appendix A. Peacock's Preface of 1837
Appendix B. An Essay on Fashionable Literature (1818)
Appendix C. The Four Ages of Poetry (1820)
Note on the text
List of emendations and variants
Ambiguous line-end hyphenations
Explanatory notes
Bibliography.

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