The work of the English novelist and satirist Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866) is distinguished by its incisive penetration of the intellectual tendencies of his time. He ranks high as a comic novelist of ideas.

Thomas Love Peacock, the son of a London merchant, was educated for a business career and not for a life of artistic pursuits. Finding work in an office uncongenial, he was able to leave his job and to live for a while on his inherited income. During these years he began to write poetry, and he became a close friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley. After the poet's death, Peacock became his literary executor and edited a volume of memorials. Peacock married Jane Gryffydh, a lady mentioned in glowing terms in Shelley's poem "Letter to Maria Gisborne."

In this period Peacock also began to write the satirical novels on which his reputation rests. The first...