Headlong Hall

Peacock's first book sets the template for nearly everything he wrote after it. Squire Headlong invites a party of talkers to his Welsh estate for the Christmas season, and their arguments carry the story. An optimist insists the world is steadily improving, a gloomy pessimist counters that everything is in decline, and a third man calmly maintains that things stay much as they always were, while a hungry clergyman keeps steering the conversation back to dinner. Around this debate Peacock arranges a small courtship, a meddling landscape gardener, and a good deal of eating and drinking. Written in 1815 and published the following year, it is a brisk, funny send-up of Romantic-era intellectual posturing. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available here.