Publisher's Synopsis
Nightmare Abbey, written in the early 1800s, is a satire of the conventions of Gothic novels as well as the Romantic movement in general. The character of Scythrop, who was named after an ancestor who killed himself out of boredom, is based on Thomas Love Peacock's good friend Percy Bysshe Shelley. Scythrop shares several key traits with the young Romantic writer; his work dwells on obscure subjects, and he spends his life in pursuit of romance, much like a Byronic hero. (Shelley, far from being offended by his friend's caricature, loved the portrait that Peacock painted of him. In fact, Shelley later named a tower-where he wrote the poem "The Cenci"-Scythrop's Tower.)Moreover, the poet Mr. Flosky is generally believed to be a satirical representation of Samuel Taylor Coleridge; Mr. Flosky shares poetic idiosyncrasies with Coleridge as well as his personal philosophies and habits. By evoking these caricatures of famous figures in the Romantic movement, Peacock situates his work in relation to the minds that typified the genre that he is satirizing.
