Crotchet Castle

by Thomas Love Peacock

Overview

In one of those beautiful valleys, through which the Thames not yet polluted by the tide, the scouring of cities, or even the minor defilement of the sandy streams of Surrey rolls a clear flood through flowery meadows, under the shade of old beech woods, and the smooth mossy greensward of the chalk hills which pour into it their tributary rivulets, as pure and pellucid as the fountain of Bandusium, or the wells of Scamander, by which the wives and daughters of the Trojans washed their splendid garments in the days of peace, before the coming of the Greeks...

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781910660447
Publisher:	Interactive Media
Publication date:	01/05/2015
Series:	Timeless Classic
Sold by:	StreetLib SRL
Format:	eBook
File size:	649 KB

About the Author

Freya Johnston is a University Lecturer and Tutorial Fellow in English at St Anne's College, Oxford. She is the author of Samuel Johnson and the Art of Sinking, 1709–1791 (2005) and co-editor of Samuel Johnson: The Arc of the Pendulum (2012).

Matthew Bevis is a University Lecturer and Tutorial Fellow in English at Keble College, Oxford. He is author of The Art of Eloquence: Byron, Dickens, Tennyson, Joyce (2007) and Comedy: A Very Short Introduction (2012), and editor of Some Versions of Empson (2007) and The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Poetry (2013).

Table of Contents

General editor's preface; Chronology; Introduction; Crotchet Castle; Appendix A. Peacock's Preface of 1837; Appendix B. Holograph fragment of Chapter 4 (c.1830); Appendix C. Holograph fragment of Chapter 5 (c.1830); Appendix D. Holograph manuscript of 'Touchandgo' (watermark 1827); Appendix E. Holograph manuscript of 'Touchandgo' (watermark 1828); Appendix F. Holograph fragment of Chapter 16 (c.1830); Appendix G. 'The Fate of a Broom: An Anticipation' (1831, 1837); Note on the text; List of emendations and variants; Ambiguous line-end hyphenations; Explanatory notes; Bibliography.

Editorial Reviews

'The idiosyncratic joy of Thomas Love Peacock’s works is highlighted within wonderfully readable scholarly introductions from Nicholas A. Joukovsky who edits Nightmare Abbey, and Freya Johnston and Matthew Bevis in their edition of Crotchet Castle. … the first thoroughly edited and annotated imprints of Peacock since the Halliford Edition of the Works, edited between 1924 and 1934 …' John Gardner, Notes and Queries

‘Readers are provided with all the information they need to understand and evaluate both the texts and the purposes underlying them … the editors have interpreted their brief generously. They have done an excellent job in identifying many 'out-of-the-way sources and analogues', as well as in positioning the texts accurately at a particular nineteenth-century cultural moment … this is likely to become the edition of choice for scholars and enthusiasts of Peacock’s novels, and for economists, historians, philosophers and other students of the changing currents of nineteenth-century intellectual culture. The volumes are beautifully produced.’ Pamela Clemit, Times Literary Supplement

‘… the first two volumes of the Cambridge Edition should become the new standard for editors of the Romantic novel. They not only perform the scholarly work of informing the reader of dates, circumstances, and variants, but they do what the best textual editing can: hugely enrich the experience of reading Nightmare Abbey and Crotchet Castle, and consequently enhance our sense of Peacock’s vigour, complexity, and wit.’ William Bowers, Keats-Shelley Journal

‘… [a] meticulous edition …' Thomas Keymer, London Review of Books

‘The Introduction to Crotchet Castle … explores the composition and publication history in great detail, exploiting … surviving draft materials to … the immediacy of Peacock’s response to unfolding events...a remarkable achievement in elucidating Peacock’s ‘fine wit’ for present and future readers.’ Peter Garside, Peacock edition

From the Publisher