Written English fiction in the nineteenth century, and earlier, was wordy. Compared to modern writing, settings, characters and action were all vastly over-described, overly metaphoric and served largely as demonstrations of the bloated vocabularies of those of a class possessed of a heavy education, a passion for deploying it and abundant idleness.

Nevertheless, there was nothing wrong with the imagination of the authors of the time and if you could strip through the verbiage or, better, develop a taste for it, you’d generally find a pretty good tale.

Not so with Nightmare Abbey. This novella consists in the main of various groupings of characters, all of the class referred to above, sitting around discussing, in the fashion first described, the philosophies in vogue amongst the intelligentsia of the time and the literature issuing forth from them.

There is nothing one would call a plot. There is no tale to speak of. The strength of the book is, I am told, Peacock’s fine sense of wit and satire. This is the core of the book. Peacock was making fun of the overwrought philosophical leanings and literature of his time. Unfortunately, to a modern reader, someone not of the time and class in which the work was composed, this is only barely discernible because you have to have firm grounding in these philosophies and literature, in order to “get” the satire. You cannot understand a parody if you have no knowledge of its target.

So the whole point of the book can only be appreciated by those modern readers possessed of this knowledge. That would not be me. My boredom is expressed by my rating. It wasn’t one star because I actually learned something. It wasn’t three stars because what I learned I didn’t find interesting.

Your mileage may be different.

What I liked about it: I'm a sucker for satire and the Romantics are ripe for it. It's also really fun to see how many of the references you get, à la The Simpsons.

What I didn't like about it: Alas, it's an epic failure of the Bechdel Test.

http://omnibrowbooks.blogspot.nl/

2.5

man i wish i were a 19th century man so that i could fully understand and enjoy how this book mocks coleridge shelley and byron

For some reason I didn't think people wrote like that in the 19th century. It's funny and light and to the point and isn't pompous and grand. Sentences aren't a paragraph long.

Removed one start because one antisemitic snap is almost to be expected of a Victorian novel, but this one had two.

I thought I was reading a Gothic farce and found myself on a philosophical scavenger hunt on an encyclopaedic scale.
I’ve learned a lot but the read was tedious.

At times I laughed out loud while reading this satire of gothic literature and the philosophical underpinnings of Romanticism and Kantian transcendental idealism. Plot takes a backseat to the amusing and parodic setting of the abbey, as well as a laundry list of character types who spout their world views, echoing dense early 19th century novels: the woman-hating patriarch, the ever-brooding son (reading Young Werther, of course!), the writer who speaks only in parroted lines from German philosophy, the quack pseudo-scientist who is on the search for real mermaids, and the comparatively well-adjusted young woman who has to put up with all these dopes.

It’s a fun read for fans of Romanticism, German literature/philosophy, and gothic literature. Peacock makes the wise choice to write a novella rather than a full-length novel, thus avoiding the joke overstaying its welcome.

Great parody/satire of the Gothic genre. I laughed to discover some tropes twisted! Only problem: no fantastic elements here.

There are no words laudatory enough to describe the genius of this book. It is probably the funniest novel I have ever read - I was smiling the whole way through and burst out laughing several times. Peacock masterly pokes fun at the reigning philosophies and literary movements of his time - which he himself was in the middle of. He was friends with Shelley and Byron but he had no problem mocking that kind of person in his work. This is a very unusual story in that it's not about the plot at all, it's all about the characters and they're without exception complete caricatures. He makes references to a lot of different ideas and people, so it's not always easy to read. If you know a little about early 19th century ideas though, you can understand enough to appreciate Peacock's genius.