Justin Croft Antiquarian Books - Rare and Antiquarian Books and Manuscripts

First edition of Peacock’s hilarious gothic pastiche, with the famous caricature of Shelley as Scythrop, the novel’s hero. Against the gloomy setting of a Lincolnshire Abbey and largely without the incumbrence of a meaningful plot, Peacock sets in motion a glittering series of characters: including the pessimists Mr Glowry, Scythrop his son, and Mr Toobad, together with Mr Flosky (doubtless a caricature of Coleridge), Mr Cypress (Byron), and several other malcontents. Scythrop prevaricates between the attentions of two highly eligible young ladies of wildly opposing tempraments, succeeding in losing them both through his whimsical and melancholic mood-swings. He is only saved from suicide by Raven his bungling butler. Peacock had been introduced to Shelley by Hookham his publisher in 1812 and they becames close friends when both settled at Great Marlow. Peacock played a part in the revision of Laon and Cythna (which appeared in its first version in 1818) and after Shelley’s departure for Italy, the two began a correspondence which produced some of the poet’s most magnificent descriptive prose in his letters from Italy. Shelley seems not to have minded in the least that his good-natured friend should parody his character so in Nightmare Abbey.