Reading Nightmare Abbey | Alexandria
Read Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock. Mocking the fashionable gloom of Romantic literature, Nightmare Abbey exposes how despair becomes a trendy pose. This satirical novel skewers pretentious intellectuals who wallow in manufactured melancholy - revealing how little has changed about performative angst in 200 years. Its genius lies in showing that "depression chic" existed long before social media.