Nightmare Abbey
by Thomas Love Peacock
The action takes place in an old monastery, where its owner, Christopher Coolie, welcomes visitors who enjoy his hospitality and participate in endless discussions. Among these guests are figures recognized by Peacock's contemporaries, including characters based on Lord Byron and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Mr. Glouri's son Skitrop (also modeled after his famous romantic, peacock friend Percy Bysche Shelley) locks himself in a tower where he reads German tragedies and transcendent philosophy and develops a "passion to reform the world." Disappointed with love, the grieving Scythrope decides that the only thing to do is to commit suicide, but circumstances convince him to follow his father in the wrong anthropy and love for Madeira.
