Crotchet Castle

by Thomas Love Peacock

Overview

As in his earlier novel Headlong Hall, Peacock assembles a group of eccentrics, each with a single monomaniacal obsession, and derives humour and social satire from their various interactions and conversations. The character who most closely approximates to the author's own voice is the Reverend Doctor Folliott, a vigorous middle-aged clergyman with a love for ancient Greek language and literature, who is greatly suspicious of the reform slogan of the "March of Intellect", as well as anything done by the "learned friend" (his nickname for Lord Brougham). There are two romantic courtships, between Mr. Chainmail (who is convinced that the world has gone downhill continuously since the twelfth century) and Susannah Touchandgo (the daughter of a disgraced banker), and between Captain Fitzchrome (an attractive gentleman with only a moderate income) and Lady Clarinda Bossnowl (the daughter of an impoverished peer, who is cynically determined to make a financially rewarding marriage). The action begins during a house-party in the nouveau riche Mr. Crotchet's villa on the Thames (up-river from London), continues during a river and canal journey towards Wales, and ends in Mr. Chainmail's pseudo-medieval dwelling (near Crotchet's villa), with a parody of the Captain Swing riots.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442938786
Publisher:	ReadHowYouWant
Publication date:	07/13/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	402 KB

About the Author

Freya Johnston is a University Lecturer and Tutorial Fellow in English at St Anne's College, Oxford. She is the author of Samuel Johnson and the Art of Sinking, 1709-1791 (2005) and co-editor of Samuel Johnson: The Arc of the Pendulum (2012).

Matthew Bevis is a University Lecturer and Tutorial Fellow in English at Keble College, Oxford. He is author of The Art of Eloquence: Byron, Dickens, Tennyson, Joyce (2007) and Comedy: A Very Short Introduction (2012), and editor of Some Versions of Empson (2007) and The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Poetry (2013).

Table of Contents

General editor's preface; Chronology; Introduction; Crotchet Castle; Appendix A. Peacock's Preface of 1837; Appendix B. Holograph fragment of Chapter 4 (c.1830); Appendix C. Holograph fragment of Chapter 5 (c.1830); Appendix D. Holograph manuscript of 'Touchandgo' (watermark 1827); Appendix E. Holograph manuscript of 'Touchandgo' (watermark 1828); Appendix F. Holograph fragment of Chapter 16 (c.1830); Appendix G. 'The Fate of a Broom: An Anticipation' (1831, 1837); Note on the text; List of emendations and variants; Ambiguous line-end hyphenations; Explanatory notes; Bibliography.