SOURCE: “The Novels of Peter Ackroyd,” in English Studies, Vol. 75, No. 5, September, 1994, pp. 442-52.

In the following essay, Peck provides an overview of the major literary themes and postmodern narrative effects in Ackroyd's fiction, including extended analysis of Hawksmoor, Chatterton, and First Light. Peck offers an unfavorable assessment of English Music and contends that First Light represents Ackroyd's most challenging novel to date.

The publication of Peter Ackroyd’s sixth novel, English Music (Hamish Hamilton, London, 1992), provides a good opportunity for an assessment of the nature of his fiction. It might be felt that this can amount to little more than a statement of the obvious: that Ackroyd is a writer with an interest in the past, who is skilled at historical reconstruction, but who is more than just an historical novelist as he is concerned with larger questions about the relationship between the past and the present...