Crotchet Castle is the sixth novel by Thomas Love Peacock, first published in 1831. [1]
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.
A contemporary definition of crotchet was “a perverse and peculiar notion”. [2]
The character who most closely approximates to the author's own voice is the Reverend Doctor Folliott, [3] 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). [4] 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.
References
- ^ "Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866)". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 21. 1911. p. 22.
- ^ Wright, Bryan. "Colonial Dictionary". Colonial Dictionary. Retrieved 15 July 2023.
- ^ Introduction to Crotchet Castle by Raymond Wright, in 1969 Penguin English Library edition of Nightmare Abbey and Crotchet Castle ( ISBN 0-14-043045-8) p. 33
- ^ Thomas Love Peacock (Literature in Perspective) by Lionel Madden (1967) p. 124
External links
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Media related to
Crotchet Castle at Wikimedia Commons -
The full text of
Crotchet Castle at Wikisource - Text of Crotchet Castle, at the T. L. Peacock Society
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