Peacock, Thomas Love

(born Oct. 18, 1785, Weymouth, Dorset, Eng.—died Jan. 23, 1866, Lower Halliford, Middlesex) English novelist and poet. For most of his life Peacock worked for the East India Co. He was a close friend of Percy B. Shelley, who greatly inspired his writing. His best verse is interspersed in his novels, which are dominated by the conversations of their characters and satirize the intellectual currents of the day. His best-known work, Nightmare Abbey (1818), satirizes romantic melancholy and includes characters based on Shelley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Lord Byron.