William Makepeace Thackeray

William Makepeace Thackeray , 1811-63, English novelist, b. Calcutta (now Kolkata), India. He is important not only as a great novelist but also as a brilliant satirist. In 1830, Thackeray left Cambridge without a degree and later entered the Middle Temple to study law. In 1833 he became editor of a periodical, the National Standard, but the following year he settled in Paris to study art. There he met Isabella Shawe, whom he married in 1836. He returned to England in 1837, supporting himself and his wife by literary hack work and by illustrating. Three years later his wife became hopelessly insane; she was cared for by a family in Essex and survived her husband by 30 years. Thackeray sent his two young daughters to live with his parents in Paris, lived himself the life of a clubman in London, and worked assiduously to support his family. Throughout the 1830s and 40s, his novels appeared serially together with miscellaneous writings in several magazines. His "Yellowplush Correspondence," in which a footman assumes the role of social and literary critic of the times, appeared (1837-38) in Fraser's. As a contributor to Punch he often parodied the false romantic sentiment pervading the fiction of his day. In 1848, Thackeray achieved widespread popularity with his humorous Book of Snobs and the same year rose to major rank among English novelists with Vanity Fair, a satirical panorama of upper-middle-class London life and manners at the beginning of the 19th cent. The novel contains many fascinating characters, particularly Becky Sharp, who, although clever and unscrupulous, is also extremely appealing. His reputation increased in 1850 with the completion of the partly autobiographical novel Pendennis. In 1851 he delivered a series of lectures, English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century, which he repeated in a tour of the United States in 1852-53. In 1852 his novel of 18th-century life, Henry Esmond, appeared. The Newcomes, in which some of the characters of Pendennis reappear, came out serially in 1853-55. In 1855-56 he delivered another series of lectures in the United States entitled The Four Georges (pub. 1860). His next novel, The Virginians (1857-59), is a continuation of the Esmond story. In 1860 Thackeray became editor of the newly founded Cornhill Magazine, in which his last novels appeared— Lovel the Widower (1860), The Adventures of Philip (1861-62), and the unfinished historical romance, Denis Duval (1864). Thackeray's eldest daughter, Anne, Lady Ritchie , was also an author; his younger daughter Harriet married Sir Leslie Stephen .

Bibliography: See his complete works (26 vol., 1910-11); his letters (ed. by G. N. Ray, 4 vol., 1945-46); studies by R. A. Colby (1979) and E. F. Harden (1979); G. N. Ray, Thackeray (2 vol., 1955 and 1958, repr. 1972) and The Buried Life (1952, repr. 1974); D. J. Taylor, Thackeray: The Life of a Literary Man (2001).

Thackeray, William Makepeace (1811–63). Novelist. Born in Calcutta, the son of a collector in the East India Company, he was educated at Charterhouse and Cambridge. This Indian background and his public school were to figure prominently in The Newcomes (1853–5). Having studied drawing in Paris and German at Weimar (where he met Goethe) he began a career as a journalist in London. He was a notable early contributor to Punch (founded 1841) and to Fraser's Magazine (founded 1830) and in 1860 became the editor of the dynamic new Cornhill Magazine. His real breakthrough came with the monthly part serialization of Vanity Fair (1847–8), a novel set at the time of Waterloo and its aftermath. Thackeray's growing interest in the culture of the 18th cent. is reflected in his novels Barry Lyndon (1844), Henry Esmond (1852), and its sequel The Virginians (1857–9) and in his two lecture series published as The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century (1851) and The Four Georges (1855–7).

Anne Curry

Thackeray, William Makepeace (1811–63), English novelist, twice visited the U.S. (Nov. 1852–April 1853; Oct. 1855–April 1856), delivering lectures on English literature and history. Prior to his first trip he had published Henry Esmond, the conclusion of which deals with colonial Virginia. Its sequel, The Virginians, was the result of research begun during the second visit, when he outlined the idea to Cooke and received suggestions from J.P. Kennedy.