William Thackeray

Full name William Makepeace Thackeray. 1811-1863. English writer, best known for his moralistic, satirical surveys and sketches of England’s upper and middle classes.

Life

William M. Thackeray was born in Calcutta, India on 18 July 1811. He was the only son of Richmond Thackeray, an officer in the East India Company’s Civil Service, and Anne Becher – both of Anglo-Indian descent. His father died on 13 September 1815 when William was three years old. Two years later his mother remarried and shortly after this sent William to a private school in Southampton, England. School time was not a very happy period in Thackeray’s life. He changed school and just became any happier in 1820, when his mother returned to England. Two years later he entered Charterhouse School in London before he matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1829. For about a year Thackeray idled about and wasted money in college, where he sometimes wrote for student journals. In June 1830 he left Trinity College without a degree in order to tour through Germany. In the winter of 1830/31 he spent some time in Weimar and met Goethe before he returned to London and entered Middle Temple as a law student. While in law school he became more and more interested in art and journalism and in 1833 invested money and became the proprietor and editor of a struggling literary weekly paper, the National Standard. However, only one year later the Standard went bankrupt and Thackeray lost almost all of his remaining private fortune. In the following years he lived and studied in Paris where he wanted to become an artist. He supported himself with occasional publications of his articles and caricatures in journals. In 1836 he met Isabella Shawe, a Paris correspondent for the Constitutional. They got married on 20 August and in the following year returned to London where their first daughter, Anne, was born. In the meantime Thackeray supported the family with small publications in magazines. In 1838 the second daughter, Jane, was borne but she died in March of the following year. After the birth of their third daughter, Harriet, in May 1840 Thackeray’s wife Isabella suffered a mental breakdown and had to be put into a private asylum. After this Thackeray, unable to care for his children on his own, sent the girls to live with his mother in Paris and toured for some months through Ireland. In the 1840s he published regularly – sometimes under the pseudonym of Michael Angelo Titmarch – and began to gain some recognition for his work. In the years to come he became more and more successful and toured through different countries, the Mediterranean, the Near East, Scotland and the US among others, where he even held series of lectures on different works. In 1875 he stood unsuccessfully as a parliamentary candidate for Oxford, but still continued publishing. In 1860 he became the first editor of Cornhill Magazine. Two years later he resigned the editorship. He died on 24 December 1863 after having suffered from heart troubles for some time.

Work: Characteristics and Themes

Thackeray’s work predominantly contains studies of the English, sometimes American, upper and middle class. These studies often contain satire and parody and offer an ironic view on society. Certain aspects of society, such as her hierarchical order, religion, hypocrisy, the institution of marriage and family and military ideals are even attacked in Thackeray’s works. Social manners, materialism, fashion, status and coming of age are topics that are dealt with in Thackeray’s novels such as Vanity Fair or Pendennis. Furthermore, some autobiographical influences can be found in his work. His satirical remarks on the romantic ideals of the writer, for example, are a reflection of his own hard struggle to make it in the publishing business. Some of Thackeray’s works are characterized as historical novels. They are predominantly set in the 18th century, a period that fascinated the author. Examples: The History of Henry Esmond; The Virginians. Thackeray’s realism is another prominent element of his work. In Vanity Fair he manages to create a very successful illusion of reality and simultaneously advertises the unreality of his ‘realism’. He reveals his perception of himself as the puppet-master and the characters of his novel as his puppets. Additionally he warns his readers that a realistic response to fictional illusions leads to self-deception and is naïve. Still, in his fictional works, he tries to develop a realistic image of society.

List of works

• The Yellowplush Papers (1837)

• Catherine (1839–40)

• A Shabby Genteel Story (1840)

• The Irish Sketchbook (1843)

• The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844)

• Notes of a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo (1846), under the name Mr M.A. Titmarsh

• The Book of Snobs (1848)

• Vanity Fair (1848)

• Pendennis (1848–1850)

• Rebecca and Rowena (1850), a parody sequel of Walter Scott's Ivanhoe

• The Paris Sketchbook (1840)

• Men's Wives (1852)

• The History of Henry Esmond (1852)

• The Newcomes (1855)

• The Rose and the Ring (1855)

• The Virginians (1857–1859)

• The Adventures of Philip (1862)

• Denis Duval (1864)

• Sketches and Travels in London

• Stray Papers: Being Stories, Reviews, Verses, and Sketches (1821-1847)

• Literary Essays

• English Humourists

• Four Georges

• Lovel the Widower

Sources

Burstein, Miriam Elizabeth. Narrating women's history in Britain. 1770 - 1902. Hampshire: Ashgate, 2004.

Salmon, Richard. William Makepeace Thackeray. Horndon: Northcote House Publishers, 2005.

The Victorian Web - literature, history, and culture in the age of Victoria 16 Jan. 2011 <http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/wmt/wmtbio.html>