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Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

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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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A somewhat expectable plot but unexpected result
At the beginning and large part of this book, this story seems to be dull, however the last three chapters changed this dull line and becomes interesting.

Anyway, this is a short story, which will not take much time to read, and might be worthy reading for modern readers. ... Read more

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Thomas Love Peacock, 1785-1866, is known as the author of half a dozen brief satiric 'novels' which caricature men and movements of the early nineteenth century. Dr Mills' critical study treats Peacock as a man who was particularly alive to the important literary development and the general movements of thought in his time. The main contention in this book is that in the Regency period Peacock suddenly became more than the conventional minor writer he had been. There is also a detailed critique of Peacock's novels, and a study of his neglected music criticism. The whole book amounts to an in depth treatment of the literary and intellectual life of the Regency period considered as a time when old tastes and ideas were giving way to new. Peacock's mixture of scepticism and intelligent sympathy gives him an important place as reporter and critic. ... Read more