145-] English Literature
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Thomas Love Peacock, (born Oct. 18, 1785, Weymouth, Dorset,
Eng.—died Jan. 23, 1866, Lower Halliford, Middlesex), English author who
satirized the intellectual tendencies of his day in novels in which
conversation predominates over character or plot . His best verse is
interspersed in his novels.Peacock met Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1812, and the
two became such close friends that Shelley made Peacock executor of his will.
Peacock spent several months near the Shelleys at Great Marlow in 1817, a
period of great importance to his development as a writer. The ideas that lie
behind many of the witty dialogues in his books probably found their origin in
the conversation of Shelley and his friends. Peacock’s essay The Four Ages of
Poetry (1820) provoked Shelley’s famous Defence of Poetry (written 1821,
published 1840).Peacock considered his novels to be “comic romances.” Headlong
Hall (1816), the first of his seven novels, already sets the pattern of all of
them: characters seated at table, eating and drinking, and embarking on learned
and philosophical discussions in which many common opinions of the day are
criticized . In his best-known work, Nightmare Abbey (1818), romantic
melancholy is satirized, with the characters Scythrop drawn from Shelley, Mr.
Flosky from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Mr. Cypress from Lord Byron.
Peacock worked most of his life for the East India Company. He was an able administrator, and in 1836 he succeeded James Mill as chief examiner, retiring on a pension in 1856.
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