Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866)

I can't rate the book until I finish the next two stories, but without doubt The Castle of Otranto is an incredible piece of fiction. Whilst it's true much of literature dates its cues from Shakespeare, the Homer epics and other world mythologies, The Castle of Otranto (1764) whilst clearly inspired by the earlier Tudor plays, is the template that not only inspired a whole genre of romantic gothics, but set the structure, characters and themes for novels of dynastic fiction and grimdark we show more see today.

Chapter one alone packs in so much - from giant helmets crushing an heir, to a peasant arrested for helping and then imprisoned under the helmet; accusations of necromancy; a Prince trying to marry his daughter in law; a ghost in a painting and a chase through the lower catacombs.

Supplemented by a small amount comedy to introduce some levity; tragedy, deceit, treachery, secrets, revelations and passionate discourse adorn every paragraph and whilst some archaic sentence work is naturally employed given the time it was written, like a lot of late 18thC fiction of its ilk it lays down the need to be fast and readable. I should note that the theatrical excesses often repeat and alongside the cultural norms of its time and place, might be prove to be a poor takeaway for modern readers unused to classic stylisms.

For me though, this marks another fantastic gothic story in my run through of this genre.

(full rating to apply when the rest of the books in the volume are read) show less

Ah, Thomas Love Peacock -- not the most popular novelist, neither in his time, nor in mine. I had to use Interlibrary Loan to get a hold of Crotchet Castle. The copy I read has been checked out three times in its lifetime. People have no taste.

Admittedly, TLP did not make himself very marketable, writing novels which are mostly pure dialogue, featuring characters who are really just personifications of philosophical viewpoints. These characters are always gathering at a well-laid show more aristocratic table to trade badinage and learned quips. Occasionally they fall in love with angelic ladies, but romance is always a mere subplot for TLP. The art of conversation is all.

In this semi-literate age, where marketing passes for argument and conversation is very nearly a dead art, the rarefied air that breathes through the novels of Thomas Love Peacock is very refreshing to me. I'm sure the other two people who read this book agree with me. Oh, we are a cultured and select few! show less

I read Nightmare Abbey because it came up as a recommendation for people who liked Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, a novel I read and loved earlier this year. While the two novels do have similarities, I found Nightmare Abbey to be much more like Candide in its skewering of the Romantic movement.

This one will probably be best appreciated by people who are pretty familiar with the Romantics, as Peacock makes many references to a number of Romantic works and based most of his characters on show more some of the leading names of the movement, including Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Lord Byron. Although knowing all of the allusions aren't necessary for enjoying the book, which has some great passages, the Wikipedia page can help with some of the more esoteric passages.

While Nightmare Abbey wasn't the book I was expecting it to be, I did enjoy the book that it is. It will never be one of my all-time favorites, but its wit, and short length, will probably have me rereading it in the future. show less

In 2015 The Guardian published a list of the 100 best novels published in English, listed in chronological order of publication. Under Covid inspired lockdown, I have taken up the challenge.
This is book 9 in the chronological listing. Short, novella more than novel, and quite different from earlier books. This is a bit of fun, nudging the ribs of the various stereotypes in gentle society of the times (published in 1818).
As an aside, many of the early books in this list portray love affairs show more of the upper class of England at the time. With the benefit of hindsight, one would have to say that the mating habits of the time and class seem uniformly ineffective in every way. The pool of possible partners is so small; the capacity to get to know prospective spouses is so limited; and the influence of parents and others so inordinately large, that it is a wonder that Britain survived the era and became a world power! show less