William Makepeace Thackeray
1811–1863
Biography
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) was an English novelist and illustrator, born in Calcutta in British India. His father died in 1815, and the boy was sent to England, where he went through several schools and spent a brief time at Trinity College, Cambridge, before leaving to travel in Europe. Much of the fortune he inherited was lost to gambling and to newspapers that failed, so he turned to writing and drawing for a living, contributing to Fraser's Magazine, The Times and Punch.
His early work was satirical and often appeared under pseudonyms. The Yellowplush Papers, comic sketches narrated by a footman, were among his first successes, and his mockery of snobbery, military pomp and hypocrisy made him popular with readers who enjoyed a rogue. His best-known work is Vanity Fair, published in monthly parts in 1847 and 1848. It gave a wide panorama of British society and made him famous.
His later novels, including Pendennis and The Newcomes, are gentler in tone. They concentrate on how young people grow up and how society shapes them, though the mockery never disappears. He also edited the Cornhill Magazine in 1860 and stood unsuccessfully for Parliament in 1857. Many Victorians placed him just behind Dickens, and today his reputation rests mainly on Vanity Fair.
On this site, Vanity Fair is the book to start with. It follows two young women, Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley, from their schooldays through the years after the Napoleonic wars, and it watches ambition, money and marriage with the dry eye that Thackeray brought to all his satire. He drew the pictures for the book as well as writing the text, and its subtitle, which speaks of pen and pencil sketches, reflects that double work.
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Books
Vanity Fair
by William Makepeace Thackeray
Vanity Fair is a satirical novel by the English author William Makepeace Thackeray, which follows the lives of Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley amid their friends and families during and after the Napoleonic Wars. It was first published as a 19-volume monthly serial (the last…
Summary from Wikipedia: Vanity Fair (novel) (CC BY-SA 4.0)