A History of Pendennis‚ Volume 1	Roundabout Papers	The History of Henry Esmond Book III-(End Of Esmond's Adventures)
A Little Dinner at Timmins's	The Book of Snobs	The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman
Ballads	The Christmas Books	The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh
Burlesques	The Fatal Boots	The Rose and the Ring
George Cruikshank	The Fitz-Boodle Papers	The Second Funeral of Napoleon
John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character	The History of Henry Esmond Book I - (The Early Youth)	The Wolves and the Lamb
Little Travels and Roadside Sketches	The History of Henry Esmond Book II-(Esmond's Military Life)	Vanity Fair
Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush The Yellowplush Papers

English journalist, novelist, famous for his novel VANITY FAIR (1847-48), a tale of two middle-class London families. Most of Thackeray's major novels were published as monthly serials. Thackeray studied in a satirical and moralistic light upper- and middle-class English life - he was once seen as the equal of his contemporary Dickens, or even as his superior.

William Makepeace Thackeray was born in Calcutta, India, as the only son of Richmond Thackeray, a Collector in the East Indian Company's service. After his father died he was sent to home to England. He was educated at Charterhouse and at Trinity College, Cambridge. Thackeray abandoned his studies without taking a degree, having lost some of his inheritance of twenty thousand pounds through gambling. In the beginning of the 1830s he visited Germany, where he met Goethe.

During 1831-33 Thackeray studied law at the Middle Temple, London, but had little enthusiasm to continue his studies. In 1833 he brought with a large heritage the National Standard, but lost his fortune a year later in the Indian bank failures and other bad investments. According to an anecdote, Thackeray offered to undertake the task of illustrating Dickens's Pickwick Papers in 1836, but the author himself found Thackeray's drawings unsuitable.

After art studies in Paris, Thackeray returned in 1837 to London and started his career as a hard working journalist. Often he used absurd pen names such as George Savage Fitz-Boodle, Michael Angelo Titmarsh, Théophile Wagstaff, and C.J. Yellowplush, Esq. In 1836 he married a poor Irish girl, Isabella Shawe; they had three daughters. Their first child, Anne Thackeray Ritchie (1837-1919), became a writer - her impressionistic texts impressed Virginia Woolf, who drew a portrait of her in Night and Day (1919) as 'Mrs Hilbery'. Ritchie (1837-1919) published several novels, and contributed to an 1898-99 edition of her father's works. A prominent intellectual figure of her time and well-acquainted with a number of the great names of British literature, she also wrote memoirs of her contemporaries, including Tennyson (1809-1892) and Ruskin (1819-1900).

Thackeray began to contribute regularly to Fraser's Magazine, Morning Chronicle, New Monthly Magazine and The Times. His writings attracted first attention in Punch, where he satirized English snobbery. These sketches reappeared in 1848 as THE BOOK OF SNOBS, in which he stated that "he who meanly admires mean things is a Snob."

In 1840 Isabella Thackeray suffered a mental breakdown, from which she never recovered, through she survived Thackeray by thirty years. The author was forced to send his children to France to his mother. The children returned to England in 1846 to live with him.

Already in his first novel, CATHERINE (1839), originally written for Fraser's Magazine, Thackeray broke with the literary conventions of his day: "The characters of the tale ARE immoral, and no doubt of it; but the writer humbly hopes the end is not so. The public was, in our notion, dosed and poisoned by the prevailing style of literary practice, and it was necessary to administer some medicine that would produce a wholesome nausea, and afterwards bring about a more healthy habit." In THE LUCK OF BARRY LYNDON (1844), Thackeray portrayed an adventurer, opportunist, and gambler, who serves in the Seven Years War, first under the English flag and then in the Prussian army, gains wealth, and eventually is punished for his imperfections. "Suppose in a game of life - and it is but a twopenny game after all - you are equally eager of winning," Thackeray wrote much later in 'Autour de mon Chapeau' (1863). "Shall you be ashamed of your ambition, or glory in it?"

In Vanity Fair , set at the time of the Napoleonic wars, Thackeray created one of the most fascinating immoral female characters, Becky Sharp, who manages to avoid the fate of Barry Lyndon: "I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year." (from Vanity Fair) The book brought Thackeray prosperity and made him an established author and popular lecturer in Europe and in the United States.

Vanity Fair was sub-titled 'A Novel without a Hero'. "Everybody in Vanity Fair must have remarked how well those live who are comfortably and thoroughly in debt; how they deny themselves nothing; how jolly and easy they are in their minds." The vast satirical panorama of a materialistic society centers on Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley, good-natured but 'silly'. They are two boarding-school friends, whose destinies are contrasted. Clever and ambitious Becky is born into poverty as the daughter of a penniless artist. Her plans to marry Amelia's brother Joseph fail. She marries Rowdon Crawley, but he is disinherited. Becky manages to live at the height of fashion through the patronage of Lord Steyne. When her husband discovers the truth, he departs to become the governor of Coventry Island. Becky is ostracized and she moves to the Continent. In the meantime Amelia's stockbroker father is ruined. Amelia is loved by William Dobbin but she marries George Osborne - he dies in the battle of Waterloo. Amelia's son is left into the care of his grandfather, who dies and leaves him a fortune. Amelia travels in the Continent with his brother and they meet Becky. Dobbin has returned from India and disapproves Amelia's kindness to Becky. Older and disillusioned, Dobbin and Amelia can marry. Becky regains her hold over Joseph, who dies in suspicious circumstances. Becky's husband Rowdon dies, and Becky ends the novel in the guise of a pious widow. - See also: Anthony Trollope, Michael Innes

Thackeray's increasing love for Jane Brookfield, the wife of an old Cambridge friend, led to a rupture in their friendship. THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND, ESQ., appeared in three volumes in 1852, and reflected the melancholic period in the life of the author. By the end of his career, Thackeray's disillusionment with contemporary culture seems to have deepened. In THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP (1862) the protagonist, Philip, is out of place in a world that does not accommodate his vision of masculinity.

Thackeray said that he couldn't start a novel until he knew every aspect of his characters. He called Victorian times "if not the most moral, certainly the most squeamish." Once, as an editor, he rejected an Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem because it employed the word harlot. Thackeray became in 1860 the first editor of the Cornhill Magazine, for which he wrote his RAUNDABOUT PAPERS, LOVE THE WIDOWER, THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP and the unfinished DENIS DUVAL. Less successful Thackeray was with his attempt to stand for Parliament. His contacts with friendly rival Charles Dickens ended in a quarrel, but their daughters continued to be friends. Thackeray died suddenly on Christams Eve 1863. Just before his death he he had reconciled with Dickens.

Thackeray was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery. His bust at the Westminster Abbey was made by the Italian sculptor Marachetti. The poet's daughter was not satisfied with the work and let another sculptor to modify her father's stone sideburns until they were the right length.



Some rights reserved Petri Liukkonen (author) & Ari Pesonen. Kuusankosken kaupunginkirjasto 2008

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