Thomas Love Peacock

Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866) was born in Weymouth, Dorset, and largely self-educated after leaving school at thirteen. He spent most of his working life as an administrator for the East India Company, rising to chief examiner in 1836 and retiring on a pension in 1856 — a career that ran alongside, rather than instead of, his writing. Introduced to Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1812, he became one of the poet's closest friends, and the two influenced each other's work considerably. Between 1815 and 1822 he published the run of satirical novels he is remembered for — Headlong Hall, Melincourt, Nightmare Abbey, and Maid Marian — each built around little more than a house party of talkers arguing the intellectual fashions of the day. He died in Surrey in 1866.