Headlong Hall

Headlong Hall is the first novel by Thomas Love Peacock. As in his later novel Crotchet Castle, Peacock assembles a group of eccentrics, each with a single monomaniacal obsession, and derives humor and social satire from their various interactions and conversations. The setting is the country estate of Squire Harry Headlong Ap-Rhaiader, Esq. in Wales. (Summary by Wikipedia)

harmonies of light and shade, melting into one another, as you see them on that rock over yonder. I never saw one of your improved places, as you call them, and which are nothing but big bowling-greens, like sheets of green paper, with a parcel of round clumps scattered over them, like so many spots of ink, flicked at random out of a pen,^[4.1] and a solitary animal here and there looking as if it were lost, that I did not think it was for all the world like Hounslow Heath, thinly sprinkled over with bushes and highwaymen.”

“Sir,” said Mr Milestone, “you will have the goodness to make a distinction between the picturesque and the beautiful.”

“Will I?” said Sir Patrick, “och! but I won't. For what is beautiful? That what pleases the eye. And what pleases the eye? Tints variously broken and blended. Now, tints variously broken and blended constitute the picturesque.”

“Allow me,” said Mr Gall. “I distinguish the picturesque and the beautiful, and I add to them, in the laying out of grounds, a third and distinct character, which I call unexpectedness.”

“Pray, sir,” said Mr Milestone, “by what name do you distinguish this character, when a person walks round the grounds for the second time?”^[4.2]

Mr Gall bit his lips, and inwardly vowed to revenge himself on Milestone, by cutting up his next publication.

A long controversy now ensued concerning the picturesque and the beautiful, highly edifying to Squire Headlong.

The three philosophers

I had never heard of this author, until his name popped up on the Guardian's list of 1000 novels everyone must read. I enjoyed it more than not--there were a couple of places I laughed out loud, but it was a little too jokey for me. Short though.

A satirical, and sometimes even slapstick, look at th

I read this because it was mentioned in The Moving Toyshop, which I loved, so I was curious. This was written in 1815 and I was floored by how the opinions variously expressed seemed to be very modern and the humor was still funny almost 200 years later. The language is difficult but I think that wa

Headlong Hall was the first of Thomas Love Peacock's novels and the simplest. I suppose it was intended as satire, but there is no longer any way of identifying who the characters represent among Peacock's contemporaries, except where he specifies in the notes. Happily, it works as comedy, even if i

Thomas Love Peacock

Headlong Hall

Thomas Love Peacock

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