Author
Thomas Love Peacock
1785-1866
English novelist, poet and East India Company official, and a close friend of Shelley, whose satirical novels gather characters at table to argue over the ideas of the day.
Thomas Love Peacock was born in Weymouth, Dorset, on 18 October 1785, the son of Samuel Peacock, a London glass merchant, and Sarah Love, whose father had served in the Royal Navy. His father died in 1794. In 1798 Peacock was taken from school, and from then on he educated himself, studying Greek, Latin, French and Italian literature in the Reading Room of the British Museum.
He worked as a clerk in the City of London and published his first volumes of poetry. In 1812 he met Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the two became close friends who influenced each other's work. In 1819 he joined the East India Company, where he showed great ability in business and in 1836 succeeded James Mill as Chief Examiner of Indian Correspondence. In 1820 he married Jane Gryffydh, whom he had met in North Wales.
His novels share a basic setting: characters at a table discussing and criticising the philosophical opinions of the day, many of them given punning names taken from Greek. After Headlong Hall came Melincourt (1817) and Nightmare Abbey (1818), both written while he lived at Great Marlow, near the Shelleys. Maid Marian (1822) was soon adapted for the stage with great success, and Crotchet Castle (1831) and Gryll Grange, his last novel, followed.
Peacock retired from the India House in 1856 and spent his last years among his books, his garden and the Thames at Lower Halliford. He died there on 23 January 1866 from injuries received in a fire, in which he had tried to save his library.
Sources: wikipedia.org
