{\b Thomas Love Peacock}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: 18 October 1785

{\b Date of Death}.: 23 January 1866

{\b Works}.

English satirist, poet and essayist, Peacock's best-known works are his 
'novels' or 'comic romances' of which there are seven in total. These include 
his Headlong Hall (1816), Melincourt (1817) and Nightmare Abbey (1818), a 
satirical work in which the conceptual target is the peculiar melancholy of 
the great Romantic poets. Specifically satirised personages are Byron, 
Coleridge and, Peacock's personal friend, Shelly. Later works, in which the 
element of plot becomes ever more important, are Crochet Castle (1831) and 
Gryll Grange (1860-1). Maid Marian (1822) and The Misfortunes of Elphin (1829) 
are unique among the novels in that they employ an historical rather than a 
contemporary setting. 

Of the poetry, the most important works are Rhododaphne (1818) and the lyrical 
works, including Newark Abbey (1842), Long Night Succeeds Thy Little Day 
(1826) and the satirical The Paper Money Lyrics (1837). Peacock also wrote two 
important critical essays: the fragment Essay on Fashionable Literature (1818) 
and The Four Ages of Poetry (1820), the essay that provoked Shelly to respond 
with his famous A Defence of Poetry, written in 1821 but only published in 1840.

{\b Featured Works}.

'To a Young Lady, Netting', 'Pindar: On the Eclipse of the Sun', 'The Lord's 
Prayer, Paraphrased', 'Henriette', 'The War Song of Dinas Vawr', 'Love and 
Age', 'Rich and Poor: Or, Saint and Sinner'.

{\b General Comment}.

Peacock was born of a London glass merchant and, raised chiefly by his mother, 
was later able to live, with a small private income, the life of a man of 
letters. In 1812 he met and made friends with Shelly, who later was to make 
Peacock executor of his will and whose friendship would also be important for 
the development of Peacock's work. In 1819 Peacock married Jane Gryffydh, who 
would bear him a number of daughters. After the death of the third of these in 
1826, she suffered a serious breakdown. The eldest of the daughters, and 
Peacock's favourite, later married George Meredith. Peacock began to work for 
the East India Company in 1819 and was pensioned in 1856.

His prose works are notable for the way in which the conversation predominates 
over plot and character. In this they display a dual inheritance: on the one 
hand, to the miscellaneous prose satire or 'Anatomy' and, on the other, to the 
philosophical dialogues of Plato. Like the Platonic  debates, those of 
Peacock's novels frequently take place during the course of a banquet now 
held, unlike Plato's feasts, in English country mansions and during 
mountainside and forest excursions.