Thomas Love Peacock
2 Published Stories
Thomas Love Peacock's Books and Stories
Crotchet Castle
Literature Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866) was an English satirist and author. Peacock was a close friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley and they influenced each other's work. He wrote satirical novels, each with the same basic setting - characters at a table discussing and criticizing the philosophical opinions of the day. He worked for the British East India Company. His own place in literature is pre-eminently that of a satirist. That he has nevertheless been the favourite only of the few is owing partly to the highly intellectual quality of his work, but mainly to his lack of ordinary qualifications of the novelist, all pretension to which he entirely disclaims. He has no plot, little human interest, and no consistent delineation of character. His personages are mere puppets, or, at best, incarnations of abstract qualities such as grace or beauty. His comedy is Aristophanic. He suffers from that dramatist's faults and, though not as daring in invention, shares many of his strengths. His works include Headlong Hall (1815), Nightmare Abbey (1818), Maid Marian (1822), The Misfortunes of Elphin (1829), Crotchet Castle (1831), and Gryll Grange (1861). You might like
Gold-Seeking on the Dalton Trail
Arthur R. Thompson Among my first passions was that for exploration. The Unknown—that region of mysteries lying upon the outskirts of commonplace environment—drew me with a mighty attraction. My earliest recollections are of wanderings into the domains of the neighbors, and of excursions—not infrequently in direct contravention to parental warnings—over fences, stone-walls, and roofs, and into cobwebbed attics, fragrant hay-lofts, and swaying tree-tops. Of my favorite tree, a sugar maple, I remember that, so thoroughly did I come to know every one of its branches, I could climb up or down unhesitatingly with eyes shut. At that advanced stage of acquaintance, however, it followed naturally that the mysteriousness, and hence the subtle attractiveness, of my friend the maple was considerably lessened. The Sacred Fount
Henry James It was an occasion, I felt — the prospect of a large party — to look out at the station for others, possible friends and even possible enemies, who might be going. Such premonitions, it was true, bred fears when they failed to breed hopes, though it was to be added that there were sometimes, in the case, rather happy ambiguities. One was glowered at, in the compartment, by people who on the morrow, after breakfast, were to prove charming; one was spoken to first by people whose sociability was subsequently to show as bleak; and one built with confidence on others who were never to reappear at all — who were only going to Birmingham. As soon as I saw Gilbert Long, some way up the platform, however, I knew him as an element.