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.
