William Makepeace Thackeray (1811 - 1863) was born in India, the son of an
East India Company administrator. After his father's death, he was sent to
England at age six to be educated. His mother joined him five years later,
after she married her first love. Thackeray was educated at the better
public schools and on taking possession of his inheritance at age
twenty-one, promptly lost it to gambling and bad investments. His work a t
Trinity College was only notable in that he lost a poetry contest to Alfred
Tennyson. After six years of marriage, his wife Isabella Shawe went insane.
His two daughters, Anne and Minnie, lived with his mother for several years
before coming to live with him. In the Victorian period, Thackeray was
considered the only potential rival to Charles Dickens.
Thackeray worked as an editor at "The Cornhill Magazine" and contributed
pieces on a variety of subjects to "Punch" and "Fraser's Monthly Magazine."
Thackeray published under a number of very Victorian pen names including
Charles James Yellowplush, Major Goliah O'Grady Gahagan, Michael Angelo
Titmarsh, and George Savage FitzBoodle. "The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon" (1844,
revised 1856) showed great satirical skill. "Vanity Fair" (1847-1848) is his
masterpiece. It contrasts the wealth and ambitions of two Regency women of
different means, boarding-school friends Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley.
Thackeray showed great skill in writing historical fiction with fine
attention to period manners and customs and a dispassionate sympathy for his
character's actions. "The History of Henry Esmond, Esq." (1852) features a
vanished England and a carefully constructed plot and emotionally complex
characters. "The Virginians" (1857-1859) detailed the lives of George and
Harry Warrington, the grandsons of Henry Esmond. "The Newcomes"
(1853-1859)features the most popular deathbed scene in Victorian times.
Thackeray's use of the adjective snob transformed its meaning; it was
previously defined as a vulgar person.
"Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has
his desire, or having it, is satisfied?"
"The wicked are wicked, no doubt, and they go astray and they fall, and they
come by their deserts; but who can tell the mischief the very virtuous do?
William Thackeray, "The Newcomes"
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