Thomas Love Peacock (1785‒1866) is one of the most distinctive prose satirists of the Romantic period. The Cambridge Edition of the Novels of Thomas Love Peacock offers the first complete text of his novels to appear for more than half a century. Crotchet Castle (1831), his sixth novel, contains all the humour and social satire for which Peacock is famous. Its lively farce is more ambitious than that of the earlier works in its range of cultural and intellectual targets, including progressivism, dogmatism, liberalism, sexism, mass education and the idiocies of the learned. The book constitutes an artistic, political and philosophical miscellany of sorts, thematically unified in its satirical emphasis on folly and dispute – and on the folly of dispute itself. This edition provides a full introduction, chronology, annotations and detailed textual and scholarly apparatus.
- Crotchet Castle (1831), Peacock's sixth novel, is a humorous satire that reveals much about nineteenth-century society
- This is volume six of the first complete edition of Thomas Love Peacock's novels to appear for over forty years
- The most comprehensive edition of the novels ever published, with full introductions, annotations and other textual and scholarly apparatus
Read more
Reviews & endorsements
'The idiosyncratic joy of Thomas Love Peacock's works is highlighted within wonderfully readable scholarly introductions from Nicholas A. Joukovsky who edits Nightmare Abbey, and Freya Johnston and Matthew Bevis in their edition of Crotchet Castle. … the first thoroughly edited and annotated imprints of Peacock since the Halliford Edition of the Works, edited between 1924 and 1934 …' John Gardner, Notes and Queries
'Readers are provided with all the information they need to understand and evaluate both the texts and the purposes underlying them … the editors have interpreted their brief generously. They have done an excellent job in identifying many 'out-of-the-way sources and analogues', as well as in positioning the texts accurately at a particular nineteenth-century cultural moment … this is likely to become the edition of choice for scholars and enthusiasts of Peacock's novels, and for economists, historians, philosophers and other students of the changing currents of nineteenth-century intellectual culture. The volumes are beautifully produced.' Pamela Clemit, Times Literary Supplement
'… the first two volumes of the Cambridge Edition should become the new standard for editors of the Romantic novel. They not only perform the scholarly work of informing the reader of dates, circumstances, and variants, but they do what the best textual editing can: hugely enrich the experience of reading Nightmare Abbey and Crotchet Castle, and consequently enhance our sense of Peacock's vigour, complexity, and wit.' William Bowers, Keats-Shelley Journal
'… [a] meticulous edition …' Thomas Keymer, London Review of Books
'The Introduction to Crotchet Castle … explores the composition and publication history in great detail, exploiting … surviving draft materials to … the immediacy of Peacock's response to unfolding events...a remarkable achievement in elucidating Peacock's 'fine wit' for present and future readers.' Peter Garside, Peacock edition
See more reviews
Customer reviews

Not yet reviewed
Be the first to review

Log in to review

Review was not posted due to profanity
×

, create a review

(If you're not , sign out)

Please enter the right captcha value

Please enter a star rating.

Your review must be a minimum of 12 words.

How do you rate this item?

Reviews must contain at least 12 words about the product.

×

Product details
- Date Published: December 2016
- format: Hardback
- isbn: 9781107030725
- length: 442 pages
- dimensions: 223 x 145 x 29 mm
- weight: 0.66kg
- contains: 2 b/w illus.
- availability: In stock
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.
Look Inside
Author
Thomas Love Peacock
Editors
Freya Johnston, University of Oxford
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, University of Oxford
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).