Nightmare Abbey (Broadview Editions) - Softcover

Peacock, Thomas Love

Softcover

ISBN 10: 155111416X ISBN 13: 9781551114163

Publisher: Broadview Press, 2007

Synopsis

This 1818 novel is set in a former abbey whose owner, Christopher Glowry, is host to visitors who enjoy his hospitality and engage in endless debate. Among these guests are figures recognizable to Peacock’s contemporaries, including characters based on Lord Byron and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Mr. Glowry’s son Scythrop (also modeled on a famous Romantic, Peacock’s friend Percy Bysshe Shelley) locks himself up in a tower where he reads German tragedies and transcendental philosophy and develops a “passion for reforming the world.” Disappointed in love, a sorrowful Scythrop decides the only thing to do is to commit suicide, but circumstances persuade him to instead follow his father in a love of misanthropy and Madeira. In addition to satire and comic romance, Nightmare Abbey presents a biting critique of the texts we view as central to British romanticism.

This Broadview edition includes a critical introduction and a range of illuminating contemporary documents on the novel’s reception and its German and British literary contexts. A selection of Peacock’s critical and autobiographical writings is also included.

About this title

Book Description:

Thomas Love Peacock's third novel, Nightmare Abbey (1818), is a Gothic satire that offers a serious yet witty critique of Romanticism. This first fully comprehensive scholarly edition, including a thorough introduction, annotations and other essential textual apparatus, will be indispensable for scholars of Peacock and Romanticism more generally.

About the Author:

Lisa Vargo is Associate Professor of English at the University of Saskatchewan. She is the editor of the Broadview edition of Mary Shelley’s Lodore (1997).

About this edition

• Publisher: Broadview Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 155111416X
• ISBN 13: 9781551114163
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 248
• Editor: Vargo Lisa