Pantopragmatic Peacock
[PEACOCK, Thomas Love.]
Gryll Grange. By the Author of ‘Headlong Hall’ … London, [Savill & Edwards for] Parker, Son, & Bourn, 1861.
8vo, pp. viii, 316, 4 (integral advertisements); apart from a few spots, a very good copy; bound in the publisher’s green pebble-grained cloth, spine lettered in gilt, brown endpapers; a little shaken and rubbed but generally bright, very slightly cocked.
First edition in book form, following serialisation in Fraser’s, of Peacock’s final novel, perhaps his most witty and urbane.
At a convivial house party at Gryll Grange the eccentric guests debate a whole range of mid-Victorian issues from the pretensions of science and the zeal of the reformers to the new-fangled ‘pantopragmatic cookery’, spirit rapping, and the competitive examinations for the Civil Service. Peacock’s inveterate hostility to modern innovation imbues every episode. Written at the age of seventy-five, thirty years after his previous novel (Crotchet Castle, 1831), Gryll Grange is a remarkable performance.
Sadleir 1957k (in the Gaisford set); Wolff 5479.