The Full Text of “Rich and Poor; or, Saint and Sinner”
1The poor man's sins are glaring;
2In the face of ghostly warning
3He is caught in the fact
4Of an overt act—
5Buying greens on Sunday morning.
6The rich man's sins are hidden
7In the pomp of wealth and station;
8And escape the sight
9Of the children of light,
10Who are wise in their generation.
11The rich man has a kitchen,
12And cooks to dress his dinner;
13The poor who would roast
14To the baker's must post,
15And thus becomes a sinner.
16The rich man has a cellar,
17And a ready butler by him;
18The poor must steer
19For his pint of beer
20Where the saint can't choose but spy him.
21The rich man's painted windows
22Hide the concerts of the quality;
23The poor can but share
24A cracked fiddle in the air,
25Which offends all sound morality.
26The rich man is invisible
27In the crowd of his gay society;
28But the poor man's delight
29Is a sore in the sight,
30And a stench in the nose of piety.
31The rich man has a carriage
32Where no rude eye can flout him;
33The poor man's bane
34Is a third class train,
35With the day-light all about him.
36The rich man goes out yachting,
37Where sanctity can't pursue him;
38The poor goes afloat
39In a fourpenny boat,
40Where the bishop groans to view him.
The Full Text of “Rich and Poor; or, Saint and Sinner”
1The poor man's sins are glaring;
2In the face of ghostly warning
3He is caught in the fact
4Of an overt act—
5Buying greens on Sunday morning.
6The rich man's sins are hidden
7In the pomp of wealth and station;
8And escape the sight
9Of the children of light,
10Who are wise in their generation.
11The rich man has a kitchen,
12And cooks to dress his dinner;
13The poor who would roast
14To the baker's must post,
15And thus becomes a sinner.
16The rich man has a cellar,
17And a ready butler by him;
18The poor must steer
19For his pint of beer
20Where the saint can't choose but spy him.
21The rich man's painted windows
22Hide the concerts of the quality;
23The poor can but share
24A cracked fiddle in the air,
25Which offends all sound morality.
26The rich man is invisible
27In the crowd of his gay society;
28But the poor man's delight
29Is a sore in the sight,
30And a stench in the nose of piety.
31The rich man has a carriage
32Where no rude eye can flout him;
33The poor man's bane
34Is a third class train,
35With the day-light all about him.
36The rich man goes out yachting,
37Where sanctity can't pursue him;
38The poor goes afloat
39In a fourpenny boat,
40Where the bishop groans to view him.
-
“Rich and Poor; or, Saint and Sinner” Introduction
-
"Rich and Poor; or, Saint and Sinner" is Thomas Love Peacock's satire on the hypocrisy of 19th-century English society (and especially 19th-century Christian society). The rich and the poor, this poem's speaker observes, are held to two very different standards of behavior. Everything the poor do to bring the slightest bit of pleasure into their lives—enjoying a pint of beer, cooking a hot dinner, listening to music—gets judged as sinfully self-indulgent by the "pious." The rich, of course, have exactly the same kinds of pleasures. But because they enjoy them behind the closed doors of their elegant homes (and because they have social standing and money), nobody bats an eye. Peacock first published this poem in 1831 in the Globe and Traveller, a newspaper.
-
-
“Rich and Poor; or, Saint and Sinner” Summary
-
Poor people's sins are obvious. Even with clear, spiritual warning against such behavior, they'll get caught shamelessly buying vegetables on a Sunday.
Rich people's sins are hidden behind the splendor of their money and social status. They stay out of sight of the priests and the pious people (who, as the Bible says, are "wise in their generation").
Rich people have kitchens and cooks to make dinner for them. If poor people want to cook their dinner, they have to take it out to the baker, and so their terrible gluttonous sin becomes visible.
Rich people have wine cellars and butlers to serve them. Poor people have to go out to have a drink in public, where judgmental saintly types can see them.
Rich people have stained-glass windows that hide concerts thrown for the upper crust. Poor people can only share the music of a broken violin out in public—which is of course deeply offensive to all moral people.
Rich people get to enjoy themselves invisibly, surrounded by other rich people. Poor people's pleasures are a public affront to all pious onlookers.
Rich people travel in carriages, where no rude onlooker can mock them. Poor people have to deal with the annoyances of a third-class train, out in the open air.
Rich people go out afloat on their yachts, where pious people and their judgments can't follow them. Poor people can only rent a little rowboat—and the bishops tut-tut over their fun.
-
-
“Rich and Poor; or, Saint and Sinner” Themes
-
Class, Morality, and Hypocrisy
The speaker of “Rich and Poor; or, Saint and Sinner” casts an ironic eye over the hypocrisy of 19th-century English society. This world, the speaker observes, is full of pious Christian moralizers who shake their heads over the behavior of the poor, condemning them for sinful gluttony and self-indulgence. But the speaker also observes that the rich do the exact same sorts of things the poor do without attracting even a speck of criticism. Those who judge the poor for immoral behavior, this poem suggests, are in fact only judging them for being poor; wealth and social class are the true standards by which hypocritical self-proclaimed “saint[s]” judge people’s behavior.
The poor and the rich do the same kinds of things for fun in the poem, such as drinking and enjoying music. Where the poor have a “pint of beer” in the pub, the rich have a “cellar” full of wine at home; where the poor enjoy the music of a “cracked fiddle,” the rich throw “concerts” behind the privacy of their own lavish "painted windows” (stained-glass windows, that is). As these examples suggest, not only do the rich enjoy the same pleasures as the poor, they do so on a grander scale!
However, the wider world judges these behaviors very differently depending on who’s doing them. To a group of people the speaker sarcastically refers to as the “children of light”—ostentatiously pious people who make a big deal about holding the world to their own standards of “sound morality”—the poor are dreadful “sinner[s]” for trying to have a good time. The rich, meanwhile, aren’t doing anything wrong in these people's eyes, even as they engage in the exact same behaviors as the poor.
The implication is that the so-called “saint[s]” who appoint themselves the guardians of morality are actually judging people based on whether they’re wealthy or poor, not on their behavior. Everything the wealthy do is perfectly fine, in their eyes; everything the poor do is immoral and sinful. The poem thus calls out the hypocrisy and classism embedded in the eyes of these "saint[s]."
- See where this theme is active in the poem.
-
Wealth, Poverty, and Privacy
Casting a dubious eye over the ridiculous hypocrisy of people who judge the poor, this poem's speaker also paints a picture of the gap between the lives of the rich and the poor in 19th-century England. Being poor, the speaker observes, means being constantly inconvenienced—and, in particular, having to live a lot of your life out in public, having no space just for yourself. Wealth buys not only status, but privacy, the ability to do what you want shielded from the public gaze.
The poor people the speaker describes have to go to a lot of trouble to enjoy basic pleasures. What's more, they have to go to that trouble in public. If they want a roasted dinner, for instance, they have to carry their food to the "baker's," as they either don't have ovens or don't have the money for fuel. If they want to listen to music, they have to listen to a "cracked fiddle in the air," in the middle of a crowd and out in the open.
The wealthy enjoy even more lavish versions of all these same pleasures, of course: they feast, drink, and listen to music. But they can have their fun in the privacy of their own homes. They have kitchens with private cooks, cellars with private butlers, and concerts with private musicians. It's much easier for them to enjoy themselves. What's more, they can enjoy themselves in places where no one can see them to judge them. The poor, who don’t have this space or these resources, have to have their fun out in public, and are thus exposed to the tut-tutting of pious hypocrites.
It's obvious that wealth buys fancier pleasures and a higher "station" (a loftier social class). But this poem makes the point that some of the biggest unsung boons of wealth are privacy and convenience.
- See where this theme is active in the poem.
-
Christianity, Austerity, and Sin
In addition to skewering classism and snobbery, the poem also takes aim at rigid Christian morality in the 19th century. The religious hypocrites who judge the poor's behavior, this poem's speaker implies, have a skewed view of the world in more ways than one. Aside from the fact that they really judge people more on how wealthy they are than on how they behave, they have an overly restrictive—even irrational—view of sinful behavior in general.
In the eyes of self-important, hypocritical 19th-century Christians, the speaker implies, even the mildest and most wholesome kinds of pleasure are crimes. The speaker paints a vivid picture of clergymen and pious meddlers gasping over the dreadful behavior of the poor. But the poem's descriptions of what these poor people are actually doing make it clear that this tut-tutting is absurd. Some of the things the poor get judged for include "buying greens on a Sunday morning" (that is, having the temerity to stop by the vegetable cart after church), having a baker "roast" their dinners because they don't have ovens of their own, popping to the pub for a "pint of beer," and renting a "fourpenny boat" for a nice afternoon out.
There's no hint of overindulgence here. In fact, all these pleasures are either necessary (buying and cooking food) or very modest (enjoying a lone "pint of beer," spending four pence on a boat rental). Nonetheless, the very sight of the poor having the mildest of good times "in the face of ghostly warning"—that is, even after being warned against fun by priests—makes the "bishop groan[]" and "offends all sound morality" (as the speaker ironically puts it, taking on the voice of the moralizers). The implication is that these pious types don't think the poor should be having fun at all. The merest sniff of pleasure, in these people's eyes, is a crime—if you're poor, at least.
- See where this theme is active in the poem.
-
-
Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Rich and Poor; or, Saint and Sinner”
-
Lines 1-5
The poor man's sins are glaring;
In the face of ghostly warning
He is caught in the fact
Of an overt act—
Buying greens on Sunday morning.The first stanza of "Rich and Poor; or, Saint and Sinner" paints a bleak picture of life for the poor in 19th-century England. Poverty itself, this poem's speaker suggests, isn't the poor's only problem; the way the world judges the poor is its own kind of burden as well. Moralizing, hypocritical Christians (a common type in this poem's era) see even the most innocuous things the poor do as sinful.
The first line of the poem—"The poor man's sins are glaring"—makes it sound as if the speaker is about to condemn poor people's terrible vices. (Note the synecdoche here: a lone "poor man" will stand for all poor people in this poem.) The poor, the speaker says, do dreadful things even in the "face of ghostly warning." That is, even though priests and other spiritual authorities counsel against such bad behavior. ("Ghostly" once meant "spiritual" more generally, rather than having to do with the spirits of the dead in particular.)
But as the rest of the stanza unfolds, it becomes clear that the speaker is being slightly sarcastic. For the "overt act," the dreadful crime the "poor man" commits right out in the open where everyone can see him is "buying greens on Sunday morning." In other words, his crime is stopping by a vegetable cart on the Christian day of rest, perhaps on his way home from church.
The thunderous judgment the speaker appears to heap on poor people here, then, is actually an ironic swipe at the people who treat the poor's most innocent actions as sins. The reason that pious types judge the behavior of the poor, the speaker will go on to suggest, isn't that the poor are particularly sinful. It's that they're poor.
In this poem, Thomas Love Peacock will mock pious hypocrites in a jaunty, lively form. The poem's cinquains (five-line stanzas) use a bouncy accentual meter:
- That means that the lines are measured out by number of beats rather than sticking to a particular kind of metrical foot, like the da-DUM rhythm of the iamb. (The poem does sometimes fall into a more regular rhythm for a moment, but not predictably).
- Each stanza starts with two three-beat lines (as in "The poor man's sins are glaring"), introduces two snappy two-beat lines (as in "He is caught in the fact"), and then returns to a three-beat line.
Alongside an ABCCB rhyme scheme, this form creates a setup-punchline rhythm: there's a steady introduction, a snappy build, and a payoff in the return to the B rhyme and the three-beat line. That form helps to underscore the speaker's pointed critique of classist hypocrisy: even this poem's shape says, This kind of judgment is an absurd joke.
-
Lines 6-10
The rich man's sins are hidden
In the pomp of wealth and station;
And escape the sight
Of the children of light,
Who are wise in their generation. -
Lines 11-15
The rich man has a kitchen,
And cooks to dress his dinner;
The poor who would roast
To the baker's must post,
And thus becomes a sinner. -
Lines 16-20
The rich man has a cellar,
And a ready butler by him;
The poor must steer
For his pint of beer
Where the saint can't choose but spy him. -
Lines 21-25
The rich man's painted windows
Hide the concerts of the quality;
The poor can but share
A cracked fiddle in the air,
Which offends all sound morality. -
Lines 26-30
The rich man is invisible
In the crowd of his gay society;
But the poor man's delight
Is a sore in the sight,
And a stench in the nose of piety. -
Lines 31-35
The rich man has a carriage
Where no rude eye can flout him;
The poor man's bane
Is a third class train,
With the day-light all about him. -
Lines 36-40
The rich man goes out yachting,
Where sanctity can't pursue him;
The poor goes afloat
In a fourpenny boat,
Where the bishop groans to view him.
-
-
“Rich and Poor; or, Saint and Sinner” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
-
Irony
This poem's observations on 19th-century English society drip with irony. Throughout the poem, the speaker mockingly takes on the perspectives of the pious moralizers who judge the poor for behavior they overlook in the rich. Their sarcastic language helps to reveal exactly how little they think of these hypocrites. The speaker spells the point out plainly in the second stanza, where they observe that the rich, insulated by money, find it easy to:
[...] escape the sight
Of the children of light,
Who are wise in their generation.Here, the speaker is making an ironic allusion to a Bible verse in which Jesus commends the wisdom of the "children of light"—people with their eyes on holy things, as opposed to the materialistic "children of the world." The speaker's point here is that there's not the slightest hint of actual godliness or wisdom in the self-appointed judges of virtue who ignore the rich's excesses and condemn the poor's slightest indulgences. The language here does, however, suggest just how highly these pious frauds think of themselves. While in truth they're hypocrites, they imagine that they're God's favorite children, doing the Lord's work.
The speaker goes on to ironically adopt this hypocritical perspective all through the poem, revealing how ridiculous it is by demonstrating how it works. It's not because poor people eat, drink, and enjoy themselves that they get judged, the speaker observes: it's because they have to do these things in shared spaces, "where the saint can't choose but spy [them]." Again, the speaker clearly doesn't think much of these so-called saints' opinions! Nor does the speaker actually believe that a poor person "becomes a sinner" when they want a hot dinner, or that their pastimes "offend[] all sound morality."
This language instead reveals hyperbolic and ludicrous ideas for what they are. The speaker turns hypocritically pious people's words and opinions against them.
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
-
Juxtaposition
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
-
Synecdoche
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
-
Anaphora
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
-
Alliteration
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
-
-
"Rich and Poor; or, Saint and Sinner" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Glaring
- Ghostly warning
- Overt
- Pomp
- Station
- The children of light, / Who are wise in their generation
- Cooks to dress his dinner
- The poor who would roast / To the baker's must post
- Post
- Cellar
- A ready butler by him
- Steer
- The saint can't choose but spy him
- Painted windows
- The quality
- Sound
- Gay
- Sore
- Flout
- Bane
- A third class train / With the day-light all about him
- Yachting
- A fourpenny boat
-
Impossible to ignore, blatant.
- See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.
-
Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Rich and Poor; or, Saint and Sinner”
-
Form
"Rich and Poor" is a satire on religious and societal hypocrisy in 19th-century England. This poem's speaker makes a sharply ironic commentary on the way that the "pious"—people who consider themselves specially holy and moral—look down on the poor, judging them for exactly the same behavior that rich people get away with all the time. The pleasures of the poor, this speaker suggests, differ from those of the rich only in that the poor are forced to enjoy those pleasures in public.
Peacock writes the poem in eight cinquains (that is, stanzas of five lines) with a jaunty accentual meter, interweaving lines with three beats (as in "The poor man's sins are glaring") and lines with two (as in "The poor man's bane"). This form feels lively and energetic, inviting readers to join the speaker in laughing at hypocritically pious people. But there's clearly anger in the speaker's tone, too.
This poem's meter and rhyme scheme are borrowed from a much earlier poem: the famous anonymous song "Tom o' Bedlam." Likely composed in the early 1600s, this influential poem is spoken by a "Bedlamite" (a resident of Bedlam, London's infamously chaotic mental hospital) who describes his sufferings and his dazzling hallucinations in a bold, hypnotic voice. By subtly quoting that poem's sounds, Peacock suggests that his poem likewise stands up for the down-and-out people whom higher society crushes under its heels.
-
Meter
The meter of "Rich and Poor" feels lively, jaunty, and bouncy. There's lots of energy in the speaker's satirical observations on the way the world sees the lives of the wealthy and the poor differently. While the rhythm here feels rollicking and wild, it's also meaningful: changes in the meter subtly reflect the poem's themes.
The poem doesn't stick to any one kind of metrical foot, like like the iamb or the trochee. But it does stick to a regular accentual pattern. That means its lines are measured out by a predictable number of beats. The pattern stays consistent across the poem:
- The first and second lines use three beats, as in "The poor | man's sins | are glaring"
- The third and fourth lines use two beats, as in "He is caught | in the fact"
- And the fifth line returns to three beats, as in "Buying greens | on Sun- | day morning
Within that broader rhythm, the speaker uses some consistent patterns:
- Nearly all of the first and second lines of each stanza, in which the speaker describes the lives of the rich, use steady iambic trimeter.
- That means the lines use three iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm. They also all use a feminine ending (an extra unstressed syllable at the end of the line), as in "The rich | man has | a cellar" or "The rich | man's sins | are hidden."
- The third, fourth, and fifth lines, in which the speaker describes the lives of the poor, are much more variable. In these lines, the speaker introduces feet with lots of pattery unstressed syllables, like the da-da-DUM of the anapest (as in "Is a sore | in the sight").
The final effect is that the lines describing the rich sail along as steadily as "yacht[s]," while the lines describing the poor bounce around like "fourpenny boat[s]" on a choppy pond. This, the poem suggests, is exactly how things feel for the rich vs. the poor: it's all smooth sailing and private pleasure for the wealthy, while the poor have to jostle around in public.
-
Rhyme Scheme
The rhyme scheme of "Rich and Poor" runs as follows:
ABCCB
This pattern creates a set-up/punchline effect:
- For most of the poem, the first two lines (AB) describe the lives and pastimes of the rich. The remaining three (CCB) describe those of the poor.
- The linked B rhymes help to stress the point that there's a comparison being drawn here.
- The double C rhyme in the middle also highlights those shorter lines, giving the lines about the poor some extra scurrying energy—a fitting effect for describing crowded, public, overexposed lives.
This rhyme scheme also tips its hat to a much older poem: the anonymous late 16th- or early 17th-century song "Tom o' Bedlam." That famous anonymous song uses the same pattern of rhyme (and rhythm) in its first four lines. (The separate CC rhymes in "Rich and Poor" form a one-line internal rhyme in the old song.) This nod to the earlier poem helps to place "Rich and Poor" in a tradition of verse that's firmly on the side of the poor and downtrodden.
The rhyme scheme of both of these poems also gives zest and bounce to the speaker's voices. In this case, that energy suggests the speaker's disgust and fury at society's hypocrisy—barely concealed by comic irony.
-
-
“Rich and Poor; or, Saint and Sinner” Speaker
-
The poem's speaker is an outraged social critic—though they don't take an overtly outraged tone. Rather than straightforwardly denouncing religious and social hypocrisy, the speaker describes the differences between the lives of the rich and the poor with sharp irony. The rich, the speaker observes, enjoy all the same kinds of pleasures as the poor: they drink, they listen to music, they enjoy a day out on a boat. The only difference is that their wealth allows them to do these things in privacy and without being judged. The poor, by contrast, get scolded by moralistic hypocrites for having the slightest bit of fun.
The speaker doesn't spell out their disgust at the way the world treats the rich and poor differently. Rather, they use blistering sarcasm. Their mocking references to the "children of light" and "saint[s]" who take it upon themselves to judge the poor make it clear that they don't think much of these pious hypocrites.
Readers would not be wrong to read this speaker as a voice for Thomas Love Peacock himself. A friend of the iconoclastic atheist Percy Bysshe Shelley, Peacock was likewise an unflinching social critic and satirist. This is not the only work in which he takes a disgusted (if still laughing) look at the world around him.
-
-
“Rich and Poor; or, Saint and Sinner” Setting
-
"Rich and Poor" is set in Peacock's time and place: England around 1831 (when this poem was first published). Even without much context, readers can gather where and when the poem is set through the speaker’s brief but vivid descriptions of life for the rich vs. life for the poor.
The poor of Peacock’s world deal with some specifically 19th-century inconveniences:
- If they want a hot dinner, for instance, they have to prepare their food at home, then carry it to a “baker’s.” Many of the poorest people in 19th-century English cities didn’t have ovens in their lodgings—or, if they did, they couldn't afford the fuel to use them. They thus had to carry their prepared food to bakers, who would cook meals at the backs of their ovens for a small fee.
- If they want to take a train, they have to ride in a “third class train,” out in the “day-light.” The cheapest seats on early passenger trains were indeed in open carriages, with nothing protecting riders from the weather.
The poor also have to deal with a very 19th-century flavor of hypocritical morality. Poor people who are seen to be having any kind of fun—drinking a “pint of beer,” listening to the music of a “cracked fiddle”—get judged by self-proclaimed “saints,” religious people who feel such indulgences are sinful. Of course, that’s only true for the poor. The rich, as the speaker points out, enjoy all the same pleasures; they just do so in the comfort of their own homes (and yachts), sheltered by their wealth. This poem’s portrait of a hypocritically pious 19th-century society suggests that the real difference between who’s a sinner and who’s a saint is whether or not they have money.
-
-
Literary and Historical Context of “Rich and Poor; or, Saint and Sinner”
-
Literary Context
Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866) was a novelist and poet whose work poked fun at the turbulent world around him. Like the essayists Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt, Peacock wrote during the Romantic era but also sat a little to one side of it, mocking some of its excesses.
Romantics like William Wordsworth advocated for simple language and heartfelt emotion in poetry (as opposed to the artifice, elegance, and cynicism of Enlightenment-era writers like Pope and Swift). But sometimes, as Peacock observed, such Romantic principles might tip over into a certain self-seriousness or a melodramatic melancholy. In his most famous work, the satirical 1818 novel Nightmare Abbey, Peacock parodies notable Romantics, including the ladykilling Lord Byron, the fantastical Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the zealous Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Peacock could draw that last character from personal observation: he was a close friend of Shelley’s, and as this poem reveals, he shared some of the younger poet’s radical political convictions. Like Shelley, Peacock was skeptical (to say the least) of England’s unfair power structures—and like Shelley, he participated in them, too. Shelley was a member of the gentry by birth (though he put as much distance as he could between himself and his well-to-do family), and Peacock spent much of his career working for the East India Company, a behemoth of a trading company that played a huge part in establishing the British Empire worldwide.
Peacock published this poem in a newspaper called the Globe and Traveller in 1831, just on the cusp of the Victorian era (which began when Queen Victoria ascended to the throne in 1837). His disgust with pious hypocrisy and with his society’s treatment of the poor anticipates similar themes in later Victorian literature. Charles Dickens’s observations of poverty in novels like David Copperfield and Oliver Twist, for instance, feel cut from the same cloth as “Rich and Poor; or, Saint and Sinner.”
Historical Context
Writing of the origins of this poem in a collected edition of his works, Peacock said:
[The poem] was suggested by a speech in which Mr. Wilberforce, replying to an observation of Dr. Lushington, that "the Society for the Suppression of Vice meddled with the poor alone," said that "the offences of the poor came more under observation than those of the rich."
He was alluding to a conversation between two noted Members of Parliament: William Wilberforce and Dr. Stephen Lushington. Wilberforce was the founder of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, an organization that aimed to reduce bad behavior like profanity and drunkenness. Such pushes for public decency were born out of an anxious political climate.
Efforts like the Society for the Suppression of Vice arose in England in the wake of the French Revolution of 1789. Seeing the common people rise up against the aristocracy over on the Continent made the ruling classes in late 18th- and early 19th-century England feel pretty nervous—especially because England's poor were living in particularly dreadful conditions, with many going hungry. Times seemed ripe for a homegrown revolution.
The Society for the Suppression of Vice wasn't just about harassing poor people for having fun, then. It was also about suppressing dissent and silencing rebellious or atheistic political speech by labeling it "indecent." Peacock's own good friend Percy Bysshe Shelley had one of his political satires pulled off the shelves on Wilberforce's orders.
-
-
More “Rich and Poor; or, Saint and Sinner” Resources
-
External Resources
-
A Short Biography — Learn more about Peacock through his entry in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
-
Portraits of Peacock — See some images of Peacock via London's National Portrait Gallery.
-
Poverty in the 19th Century — Read the BBC's overview of the debates and politics surrounding poverty in 19th-century England to learn more about the world this poem describes.
-
The Thomas Love Peacock Society — Visit the website of the Thomas Love Peacock Society to learn more about his work and find some contemporary scholarship about him. (Don't miss their list of Peacock's Uncommon Words, a compendium of some of the oddest vocabulary from Peacock's works.)
-
Peacock the Satirist — Read an article about Peacock's most famous work, the novel Nightmare Abbey, to learn more about his satirical writing.
-
-
