{"product_id":"nightmare-abbey-crotchet-castle","title":"Nightmare Abbey\/Crotchet Castle","description":"Thomas Love Peacock is literature's perfect individualist. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e He has points in common with Aristophanes, Plato, Rabelais, Voltaire, and even Aldous Huxley, but resembles none of them; we can talk of the satirical novel of ideas, but his satire is too cheery and good-natured, his novel too rambling, and his ideas too jovially destructive for the label to stick. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eA romantic in his youth and a friend of Shelley, he happily made hay of the romantic movement in \u003ci\u003eNightmare Abbey\u003c\/i\u003e, clamping Coleridge, Byron, and Shelley himself in a kind of painless pillory. And in \u003ci\u003eCrotchet Castle\u003c\/i\u003e he did no less for the political economists, pitting his gifts of exaggeration and ridicule against scientific progress and March of Mind. Yet the romantic in him never died: the long, witty, and indecisive talk of his characters is set in wild, natural scenery which Peacock describes with true feeling.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eThomas Love Peacock\u003c\/b\u003e (1785-1866) was born in Weymouth, the son of a London merchant. His schooling ended before he was thirteen and he became a clerk in a City office in London while beginning a close study of French, Italian and English literature. He also published several volumes of minor poetry through which he made the acquaintance of Shelley, who was a close friend from 1812 until his death in 1822.\u003cp\u003ePeacock wrote his first novel, \u003cb\u003eHeadlong Hall\u003c\/b\u003e, in 1815, starting the series of seven satirical novels on which his fame rests. \u003cb\u003eMelincourt \u003c\/b\u003eand \u003cb\u003eNightmare Abbey\u003c\/b\u003e, a satire on 'black romanticism', followed in 1817 and 1818. In 1820 he married Jane Gryffydh and also wrote \u003cb\u003eThe Four Ages of Poetry\u003c\/b\u003e, which baited Shelley to reply with his classic \u003cb\u003eDefense of Poetry\u003c\/b\u003e. Further novels, \u003cb\u003eMaid Marion \u003c\/b\u003e(1822), \u003cb\u003eThe Misfortunes of Elphin \u003c\/b\u003e(1829), \u003cb\u003eCrochet Castle \u003c\/b\u003e(1831), a satire on political economy and the ideas of James Mill and Bentham, followed, but he was desperately grief-stricken by the death of his mother in 1833 and for the next twenty-five years wrote almost nothing, working with great diligence for the East India Company as an excellent administrator. His \u003cb\u003eMemoirs of Shelley \u003c\/b\u003ewere published in 1858-62 and his last novel, \u003cb\u003eGryll Grange\u003c\/b\u003e, in 1860. He retired in 1856 and lived as a recluse until his death.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Penguin Adult Hc\/Tr","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50459940782354,"sku":"9780140430455","price":13.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_34c87241-289c-4a35-96fe-8e24efbe993c.jpg?v=1730016676","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/nightmare-abbey-crotchet-castle","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}