Peacock’s third novel,
Nightmare Abbey, represents a return to the pattern of
Headlong Hall(1815). His previous novel,
Melincourt(1817), also bears the name of a country house but is less focused on a particular place, its peripatetic action unfolding over a virtual Regency landscape. Moreover,
Melincourtis the most politically engaged of Peacock’s novels, its reform-minded hero and heroine clearly speaking for Peacock himself. Peacock’s friend, the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley — on whom
Melincourt’shero, Sylvan Forester, is said to be based — thought so highly of
Melincourtthat he recommended it to his father-in-law, the radical philosopher William Godwin. Thus, when Peacock wrote to him in May and September 1818 of a novel-in-progress entitled
Nightmare Abbey,…
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Citation: Mulvihill, James. "Nightmare Abbey". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 07 June 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16900, accessed 03 October 2024.]