The Project Gutenberg EBook of Headlong Hall, by Thomas Love Peacock

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Title: Headlong Hall

Author: Thomas Love Peacock

Release Date: July 2, 2004 [EBook #12803]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HEADLONG HALL ***

Produced by Harrison Ainsworth

HEADLONG HALL

by

Thomas Love Peacock

Contents

Preface

I. The Mail
II. The Squire--The Breakfast
III. The Arrivals
IV. The Grounds
V. The Dinner
VI. The Evening
VII. The Walk
VIII. The Tower
IX. The Sexton
X. The Skull
XI. The Anniversary
XII. The Lecture
XIII. The Ball
XIV. The Proposals
XV. The Conclusion

All philosophers, who find
Some favourite system to their mind,
In every point to make it fit,
Will force all nature to submit.

P R E F A C E

to

"Headlong Hall" and the three novels
published along with it in 1837.

--------

All these little publications appeared originally without prefaces. I
left them to speak for themselves; and I thought I might very fitly
preserve my own impersonality, having never intruded on the
personality of others, nor taken any liberties but with public conduct
and public opinions. But an old friend assures me, that to publish a
book without a preface is like entering a drawing-room without making
a bow. In deference to this opinion, though I am not quite clear of
its soundness, I make my prefatory bow at this eleventh hour.

"Headlong Hall" was written in 1815; "Nightmare Abbey" in 1817; "Maid
Marian", with the exception of the last three chapters, in 1818;
"Crotchet Castle" in 1830. I am desirous to note the intervals,
because, at each of those periods, things were true, in great matters
and in small, which are true no longer. "Headlong Hall" begins with
the Holyhead Mail, and "Crotchet Castle" ends with a rotten borough.
The Holyhead mail no longer keeps the same hours, nor stops at the
Capel Cerig Inn, which the progress of improvement has thrown out of
the road; and the rotten boroughs of 1830 have