University Libraries Promotion and Tenure Recognition

Headlong Hal, published in December 1815 but postdated 1816, was the first of the seven stylish and witty satiric tales of Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866). As in most of his later tales, Peacock gathers a group of representative intellectuals at a country house and allows them to talk about their pet theories, thus inaugurating a distinctive tradition in English fiction--that of the conversation novel. The continuing philosophical dialogue in Headlong Hall—between a perfectibilian, a deteriorationist, and a statu-quo-ite—echoes the ideological conflicts of the Romantic period and anticipates the Victorian debate over the doctrine of progress.

I have chosen Headlong Hall because I edited the work as part of my Oxford D.Phil. thesis, and because much of my subsequent research has centered on Peacock, whose letters I have edited for Oxford University Press and whose life I am currently writing. I particularly wanted to choose a rare book to mark the significant role that Penn State's Special Collections have played in my teaching and research as well as to acknowledge the generous help I have received over the years from those who have built and maintained the University's rare book and manuscript collections, especially Charles Mann and Sandra Stelts.