Melincourt - Or, Sir Oran Haut-Ton — Thomas Love Peacock

This second (1817) novel by the English satirist takes on the electoral system of the time, in a plot about a civilized yet silent orangutan elected Member of Parliament for the “rotten-borough” Onevote. The novel also serves as a scathing treatise on romanticism, primitivism, and the idea of the “noble savage.”