Nightmare Abbey

by Thomas Love Peacock

"Nightmare Abbey" by Thomas Love Peacock is a novella written in 1818 that satirizes the gloomy excesses of Romantic literature. Set in an isolated mansion, the story follows melancholy Christopher Glowry and his son Scythrop, who becomes entangled with two women while hiding a mysterious fugitive. Through eccentric characters and their philosophical conversations, Peacock lampoons the era's obsession with morbid subjects and misanthropy, contrasting overheated imagination with everyday reality through light-hearted ridicule.