''Crotchet Castle'' is the sixth

novel A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book. The word derives from the for 'new', 'news', or 'short story (of something new)', itself from the , a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ...

Thomas Love Peacock Thomas Love Peacock (18 October 1785 – 23 January 1866) was an English novelist, poet, and official of the East India Company. He was a close friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and they influenced each other's work. Peacock wrote satirical novels ...

, first published in 1831. 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”. The character who most closely approximates to the author's own voice is the Reverend Doctor Folliott, 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 The March of Intellect, or the 'March of mind', was the subject of heated debate in early nineteenth-century England, one side welcoming the progress of society towards greater, and more widespread, knowledge and understanding, the other depreca ...

", as well as anything done by the "learned friend" (his nickname for

Lord Brougham Henry Peter Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux, (; 19 September 1778 – 7 May 1868) was a British statesman who became Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain and played a prominent role in passing the Reform Act 1832 and Slavery ...

).''Thomas Love Peacock (Literature in Perspective)'' by Lionel Madden (1967) p. 124 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

External links

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Text of ''Crotchet Castle'', at the T. L. Peacock Society
English novels 1831 British novels Novels by Thomas Love Peacock {{1830s-novel-stub