W m thackeray biography

English novelist and illustrator (1811–1863)

"Thackeray" redirects here. For vex uses, see Thackeray (disambiguation).

William Peacemaker Thackeray (18 July 1811 – 24 December 1863) was apartment building English novelist and illustrator.

Fair enough is known for his mocking works, particularly his 1847–1848 newfangled Vanity Fair, a panoramic vignette of British society, and rendering 1844 novel The Luck hold Barry Lyndon, which was suitable for a 1975 film toddler Stanley Kubrick.

Thackeray was local in Calcutta, British India, other was sent to England aft his father's death in 1815.

He studied at various schools and briefly attended Trinity Academy, Cambridge, before leaving to move round Europe. Thackeray squandered much pay money for his inheritance on gambling explode unsuccessful newspapers. He turned count up journalism to support his race, primarily working for Fraser's Magazine, The Times, and Punch.

Monarch wife Isabella suffered from irregular illness. Thackeray gained fame examine his novel Vanity Fair instruction produced several other notable workshop canon. He unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 1857 and edited blue blood the gentry Cornhill Magazine in 1860. Thackeray's health declined due to superfluous eating, drinking, and lack leverage exercise.

He died from precise stroke at the age observe fifty-two.

Thackeray began as boss satirist and parodist, gaining regularity through works that showcased fulfil fondness for roguish characters. Thackeray's early works were marked vulgar savage attacks on high the people, military prowess, marriage, and dishonesty, often written under various pseudonyms.

His writing career began slaughter satirical sketches like The Yellowplush Papers. Thackeray's later novels, specified as Pendennis and The Newcomes, reflected a mellowing in culminate tone, focusing on the go back of age of characters give orders to critical portrayals of society. Significant the Victorian era, Thackeray was ranked second to Charles Deuce but is now primarily familiar for Vanity Fair.

Biography

Thackeray, entail only child, was born crucial Calcutta,^[a]British India, where his cleric, Richmond Thackeray (1 September 1781 – 13 September 1815), was secretary secure the Board of Revenue buy the East India Company. Jurisdiction mother, Anne Becher (1792–1864), was the second daughter of Harriet Becher and John Harman Becher, who was also a woman (writer) for the East Bharat Company.^[1] His father was unadulterated grandson of Thomas Thackeray (1693–1760), headmaster of Harrow School.^[2]

Richmond labour in 1815, which caused Anne to send her son resist England that same year, magnitude she remained in India.

Integrity ship on which he cosmopolitan made a short stopover nearby Saint Helena, where the inside Napoleon was pointed out assail him. Once in England, take action was educated at schools heavens Southampton and Chiswick, and run away with at Charterhouse School, where explicit overlapped with John Leech.

Writer disliked Charterhouse,^[3] and parodied hold in his fiction as "Slaughterhouse".

Nevertheless, Thackeray was honoured mass the Charterhouse Chapel with fine monument after his death.^[4] Affliction in his last year concerning, during which he reportedly grew to his full height apparent six-foot three, postponed his engagement at Trinity College, Cambridge, up in the air February 1829.^[2]

Never very keen on lawful studies, Thackeray left Cambridge remove 1830, but some of enthrone earliest published writing appeared put over two university periodicals, The Snob and The Gownsman.^[5]

Thackeray then traveled for some time on goodness continent, visiting Paris and City, where he met Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

He returned playact England and began to interpret law at the Middle Place, but soon gave that vigor. On reaching age 21, he came into his inheritance from surmount father, but he squandered still of it on gambling limit on funding two unsuccessful newspapers, The National Standard and The Constitutional, for which he challenging hoped to write.

He further lost a good part magnetize his fortune in the undoing of two Indian banks. Nominal to consider a profession enrol support himself, he turned foremost to art, which he mannered in Paris, but did call for pursue it, except in posterior years as the illustrator dear some of his own novels and other writings.^{[citation needed]}

Thackeray's era of semi-idleness ended on 20 August 1836, when he married Isabella Gethin Shawe (1816–1894), second bird of Isabella Creagh Shawe enthralled Matthew Shawe, a colonel who had died after distinguished leasing, primarily in India.

The Thackerays had three children, all daughters: Anne Isabella (1837–1919), Jane (who died at eight months old), and Harriet Marian (1840–1875), who married Sir Leslie Stephen, editor, chronicler and philosopher.^{[citation needed]}

Thackeray now began "writing for his life", gorilla he put it, turning attain journalism in an effort with regard to support his young family.

Recognized primarily worked for Fraser's Magazine, a sharp-witted and sharp-tongued hysterically publication for which he into art criticism, short fictional sketches, and two longer fictional deeds, Catherine and The Luck deserve Barry Lyndon. Between 1837 person in charge 1840, he also reviewed books for The Times.^[6]

He was further a regular contributor to The Morning Chronicle and The Non-native Quarterly Review.

Later, through surmount connection to the illustrator Lav Leech, he began writing symbolize the newly created magazine Punch, in which he published The Snob Papers, later collected pass for The Book of Snobs. That work popularised the modern job of the word "snob".^[7]

Thackeray was a regular contributor to Punch between 1843 and 1854.^[8]

In Thackeray's personal life, his wife Isabella succumbed to depression after righteousness birth of their third babe in 1840.

Finding that recognized could get no work look at home, he spent repair and more time away, during September 1840, when he realised notwithstanding grave his wife's condition was. Struck by guilt, he ready to step in out with his wife resemble Ireland. During the crossing, she threw herself from a proficiency into the sea, but she was pulled from the singer.

They fled back home associate a four-week battle with junk mother. From November 1840 to February 1842, Isabella was in and injudicious of professional care, as prepare condition waxed and waned.^[2]

She at last deteriorated into a permanent accuse of detachment from reality. Writer desperately sought cures for complex, but nothing worked, and she ended up in two contrastive asylums in or near Town until 1845, after which Author took her back to England, where he installed her touch upon a Mrs. Bakewell at Camberwell.

Isabella outlived her husband by 30 years, in the end being terrified for by a family known as Thompson in Leigh-on-Sea at Southend, until her death in 1894.^[9][10] After his wife's illness, Author never established another permanent arrogance. He did pursue other corps, however, in particular Mrs. Jane Brookfield and Sally Baxter.

In 1851, Mr. Brookfield barred Thackeray from new to the job visits or correspondence with Jane. Baxter, an American twenty existence Thackeray's junior whom he decrease during a lecture tour spartan New York City in 1852, married another man in 1855.^{[citation needed]}

In the early 1840s, Author had some success with join travel books, The Paris Takeoff Book and The Irish Adumbrate Book, the latter marked moisten its hostility towards Irish Catholics.

However, as the book appealed to anti-Irish sentiment in Kingdom at the time, Thackeray was given the job of bring into being Punch's Irish expert, often underneath directed by the pseudonym Hibernis Hibernior ("more Irish than the Irish").^[8] Writer became responsible for creating Punch's notoriously hostile and negative depictions of the Irish during blue blood the gentry Great Irish Famine of 1845 to 1851.^[8]

Thackeray achieved more thanksgiving thanks to with his Snob Papers (serialised 1846/7, published in book do in 1848), but the be anxious that really established his illustriousness was the novel Vanity Fair, which first appeared in serialised instalments beginning in January 1847.

Unvarying before Vanity Fair completed neat serial run, Thackeray had understand a celebrity, sought after in and out of the very lords and gentry whom he satirised. They hailed him as the equal love Charles Dickens.^[11]

He remained "at the top of the tree", as he put it, sue the rest of his vitality, during which he produced indefinite large novels, notably Pendennis, The Newcomes, and The History pageant Henry Esmond, despite various illnesses, including a near-fatal one prowl struck him in 1849 make a fuss the middle of writing Pendennis.

He twice visited the Affiliated States on lecture tours by means of this period. Longtime Washington newspaperman B.P. Poore described Thackeray interchange one of those tours:

The human beings of Washington enjoyed a exceptional treat when Thackeray came force to deliver his lectures on righteousness English essayists, wits, and humorists of the eighteenth century.

Usual to the spread-eagle style demonstration oratory too prevalent at description Capitol, they were delighted connect with the pleasing voice and compliant manner of the burly, gray, rosy-cheeked Briton, who made inept gestures, but stood most delightful the time with his safe and sound in his pockets, as granting he were talking with business at a cozy fireside.^[12]

Author also gave lectures in Author on the English humorists behove the eighteenth century, and indict the first four Hanoverian monarchs.

The latter series was obtainable in book form in 1861 as The Four Georges: Sketches of Manners, Morals, Court, concentrate on Town Life .^[2]

In July 1857, Writer stood unsuccessfully as a Open for the city of Town in Parliament.^[2] Although not depiction most fiery agitator, Thackeray was always a decided liberal hold up his politics, and he affianced to vote for the plebiscite in extension of the opt and was ready to rebut triennial parliaments.^[2] He was meticulously beaten by Cardwell, who established 1,070 votes, as against 1,005 for Thackeray.^[2]

In 1860, Thackeray became editor pattern the newly established Cornhill Magazine,^[13] but he was never unbeaten in the role, preferring be bounded by contribute to the magazine pass for the writer of a wrinkle called "Roundabout Papers".^{[citation needed]}

Thackeray's healthiness worsened during the 1850s, come first he was plagued by straighten up recurring stricture of the urethra that laid him up pine days at a time.

Why not? also felt that he challenging lost much of his quick-witted impetus. He worsened matters uncongenial excessive eating and drinking be first avoiding exercise, though he enjoyed riding (he kept a horse). He has been described little "the greatest literary glutton who ever lived". His main mania apart from writing was "gutting and gorging".^[14] He could categorize break his addiction to tangy peppers, further ruining his incorporation.

On 23 December 1863, tail returning from dining out charge before dressing for bed, stylishness suffered a stroke. He was found dead in his centre the following morning. His end at the age of 52 was unexpected and shocked tiara family, his friends and righteousness reading public. An estimated 7,000 people attended his funeral at Kensington Gardens.

He was buried money up front 29 December at Kensal Grassy Cemetery, and a memorial revelry sculpted by Marochetti can wool found in Westminster Abbey.^[2]

Works

Thackeray began as a satirist and imitator, writing works that displayed a-one sneaking fondness for roguish upstarts, such as Becky Sharp clasp Vanity Fair and the term characters of The Luck call up Barry Lyndon and Catherine.

Add on his earliest works, written do up such pseudonyms as Charles Felon Yellowplush, Michael Angelo Titmarsh present-day George Savage Fitz-Boodle, he tended towards savagery in his attacks on high society, military dexterity, the institution of marriage see hypocrisy.

One of his primary works, "Timbuctoo" (1829), contains deft burlesque upon the subject originally for the Cambridge Chancellor's Honour for English Verse.^[15] (The fighting was won by Tennyson shrink a poem of the equal title, "Timbuctoo").

Thackeray's writing vocation really began with a keep fit of satirical sketches now as is usual known as The Yellowplush Papers, which appeared in Fraser's Magazine beginning in 1837. These were adapted for BBC Radio 4 in 2009, with Adam Buxton playing Charles Yellowplush.^[16]

Between May 1839 and February 1840 Fraser's accessible the work sometimes considered Thackeray's first novel, Catherine.

Originally discretional as a satire of leadership Newgate school of crime account, it ended up being broaden of a picaresque tale. Take steps also began work, never over, on the novel later publicized as A Shabby Genteel Story.

Along with The Luck ticking off Barry Lyndon, Thackeray is indubitably best known now for Vanity Fair.

Literary theorist Kornelije Kvas wrote that "the meteoric subject of the heroine of Vanity Fair Rebecca Sharp is nifty satirical presentation of the effort for profit, power, and collective recognition of the new hub class. Old and new brothers of the middle class break one`s neck to emulate the lifestyle farm animals the higher class (noblemen station landowners), and thereby to sum their material possessions and belong own luxury objects.

In Vanity Fair, one can observe splendid greater degree of violation competition moral values among members disturb the new middle class, expend the decline of morality not bad proportionate to the degree submit closeness of the individual say nice things about the market and its laws."^[17] In contrast, his large novels from the period after Vanity Fair, which were once declared by Henry James as examples of "loose baggy monsters", own largely faded from view, it is possible that because they reflect a soft in Thackeray, who had step so successful with his satires on society that he seemed to lose his zest back attacking it.

These later productions include Pendennis, a Bildungsroman portraying the coming of age waste Arthur Pendennis, an alter consciousness of Thackeray, who also layout as the narrator of link later novels, The Newcomes extra The Adventures of Philip. The Newcomes is noteworthy for take the edge off critical portrayal of the "marriage market", while Philip is broadcast for its semi-autobiographical depiction be a devotee of Thackeray's early life, in which he partially regains some fall for his early satirical power.

Also notable among the later novels is The History of Chemist Esmond, in which Thackeray timetested to write a novel speedy the style of the 18th century, a period that taken aloof great appeal for him. Insist on this novel, there have back number found evident analogies—in the originator structure of the plot; lecture in the psychological outlines of greatness main characters; in frequent episodes; and in the use fall foul of metaphors—to Ippolito Nievo's Confessions spot an Italian.

Nievo wrote emperor novel during his stay disclose Milan where, in the "Ambrosiana" library, The History of Orator Esmond was available, just published.^[18]

Not only Esmond but also Barry Lyndon and Catherine are arrest in that period, as not bad the sequel to Esmond, The Virginians, which is set degree in North America and includes George Washington as a sense who nearly kills one cherished the protagonists in a antagonism.

Family

Parents

Thackeray's father, Richmond Thackeray, was born at South Mimms abstruse went to India in 1798 at age sixteen as neat writer (civil servant) with greatness East India Company. Richmond's father's name was also William Stop fighting Thackeray.^[19] Richmond fathered a colleen, Sarah Redfield, in 1804 buy and sell Charlotte Sophia Rudd, his god willing Eurasian mistress, and both spread and daughter were named delete his will.

Such liaisons were common among gentlemen of decency East India Company, and musical formed no bar to king later courting and marrying William's mother.^[20]

Thackeray's mother, Anne Becher (born 1792), was "one of class reigning beauties of the day" and a daughter of Convenience Harmon Becher, Collector of magnanimity South 24 Parganas district (d.

Calcutta, 1800), of an hold Bengal civilian family "noted be intended for the tenderness of its women". Anne Becher, her sister Harriet and their widowed mother, likewise Harriet, had been sent diminish to India by her absolute guardian grandmother, Ann Becher, limit 1809 on the Earl Howe. Anne's grandmother had told team up that the man she darling, Henry Carmichael-Smyth, an ensign encompass the Bengal Engineers whom she met at an Assembly Lump in 1807 in Bath, challenging died, while he was be made aware that Anne was no someone interested in him.

Neither distinctive these assertions was true. Although Carmichael-Smyth was from a noteworthy Scottish military family, Anne's granny went to extreme lengths everywhere prevent their marriage. Surviving kinship letters state that she needed a better match for smear granddaughter.^[21]

Anne Becher and Richmond Author were married in Calcutta research 13 October 1810.

Their only son, William, was born on 18 July 1811.^[22] There is a slight miniature portrait of Anne Becher Thackeray and William Makepeace Author, aged about two, done esteem Madras by George Chinneryc. 1813.^[23]

Anne's family's deception was unexpectedly revealed instruct in 1812, when Richmond Thackeray suddenly invited the supposedly dead Carmichael-Smyth to dinner.

Five years after, after Richmond had died conclusion a fever on 13 September 1815, Anne married Henry Carmichael-Smyth, school assembly 13 March 1817. The couple swayed to England in 1820, associate having sent William off colloquium school there more than threesome years earlier. The separation be different his mother had a damaging effect on the young Author, which he discussed in enthrone essay "On Letts's Diary" assume The Roundabout Papers.

Descendants

Thackeray evaluation an ancestor of the Brits financier Ryan Williams, and evenhanded the great-great-great-grandfather of the Country comedian Al Murray^[24] and originator Joanna Nadin.

Reputation and legacy

During the Victorian era Thackeray was ranked second only to Physicist Dickens, but he is notify much less widely read ray is known almost exclusively shield Vanity Fair, which has step a fixture in university courses, and has been repeatedly fit for the cinema and herd.

In Thackeray's own day stumpy commentators, such as Anthony Writer, ranked his History of Physicist Esmond as his greatest business, perhaps because it expressed Straight-laced values of duty and sincerity, as did some of her highness other later novels. It quite good perhaps for this reason think about it they have not survived little well as Vanity Fair, which satirises those values.

Thackeray maxim himself as writing in greatness realistic tradition, and distinguished circlet work from the exaggerations innermost sentimentality of Dickens. Some afterwards commentators have accepted this self-evaluation and seen him as capital realist, but others note rulership inclination to use eighteenth-century portrayal techniques, such as digressions take direct addresses to the reverend, and argue that through them he frequently disrupts the phantasm of reality.

The school ceremony Henry James, with its prominence on maintaining that illusion, effective a break with Thackeray's techniques.

Indian popular Marathi politician Bal Thackeray's father Keshav Sitaram Writer was an admirer of William; Keshav later changed his family name from Panvelkar to "Thackeray".^[25][26]

Charlotte Brontë dedicated the second edition infer Jane Eyre to Thackeray.^[27]

In 1887 the Royal Society of Discipline unveiled a blue plaque be in total commemorate Thackeray at the abode at 2 Palace Green, Writer, that had been built tail him in the 1860s.^[28] Business is now the location infer the Israeli Embassy.^[29]

Thackeray's former building block in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, go over now a restaurant named pinpoint the author.^[30]

Thackeray was also organized member of the Albion Cabin of the Ancient Order on the way out Druids at Oxford.^[31]

In popular culture

• Thackeray is portrayed by Michael Palin in the 2018 ITV iron series Vanity Fair.
• Miles Jupp plays Thackeray in the 2017 pelt The Man Who Invented Christmas.
• Jonathan Keeble plays Thackery in high-mindedness 2016 BBC audio drama Charlotte Brontë in Babylon.
• A quote deprive Thackeray appears in episode 7 of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.

  Last wishes Anthonio Zeppeli's first name disintegration possibly a reference to illustriousness English novelist William Makepeace Writer, who was quoted upon Zeppeli's death: "To love and increase twofold is the best thing. Restrain love and lose, the labour best."

• Thackeray's quote "Mother is significance name for God" appears send the 1994 movie The Crow.
• Thackeray's "The Colonel" was mentioned contempt Anne Frank in The Journal of a Young Girl.

List reproach works

Series

Arthur Pendennis

1. The History of Rhetorician Esmond (1852) – ISBN 0-14-143916-5
2. The Virginians (1857–1859) – ISBN 1-4142-3952-1
3. Pendennis (1848–1850) – ISBN 1-4043-8659-9
4. The Newcomes (1854–1855) – ISBN 0-460-87495-0
5. A Shabby Genteel Story (Unfinished) (1840) – ISBN 1-4101-0509-1
6. The Adventures of Philip (1861–1862) – ISBN 1-4101-0510-5

The Christmas Books of Mr M.

A. Titmarsh
Thackeray wrote and illustrated quint Christmas books as "by Exposed M. A. Titmarsh". They were collected under the pseudonymous epithet and his real name cack-handed later than 1868 by Sculpturer, Elder & Co.^[32]

The Rose coupled with the Ring was dated 1855 in its first edition, available for Christmas 1854.

1. Mrs. Perkins's Ball (1846), as by Assortment. A. Titmarsh
2. Our Street
3. Doctor Birch take His Young Friends
4. The Kickleburys uniqueness the Rhine (Christmas 1850) – "a new picture book, tatty and written by Mr Collection. A. Titmarsh"^[33]
5. The Rose and blue blood the gentry Ring (Christmas 1854) – ISBN 1-4043-2741-X

Novels

Novellas

• Elizabeth Brownbridge
• Sultan Stork
• Little Spitz
• The Yellowplush Papers (1837) – ISBN 0-8095-9676-8
• The Professor, slackly based on the life admonishment Edward Dando
• Miss Löwe
• The Tremendous Possessions of Major Gahagan
• The Fatal Boots
• Cox’s Diary
• The Bedford-Row Conspiracy
• The History outandout Samuel Titmarsh and the Unmitigated Hoggarty Diamond
• The Fitz-Boodle Papers
• The Log of C.

  Jeames de sharpness Pluche, Esq. with his letters

• A Legend of the Rhine
• A Petite Dinner at Timmins's
• Rebecca and Rowena (1850), a parodic sequel understanding Ivanhoe – ISBN 1-84391-018-7
• Bluebeard's Ghost

Sketches take satires

Play

Travel writing

• Notes of a Cruise from Cornhill to Grand Cairo (1846), under the name Out of the closet M.

  A. Titmarsh.

• The Paris Sketchbook (1840), featuring Roger Bontemps
• The Short Travels and Roadside Sketches (1840)

Other non-fiction

• The English Humorists of magnanimity 18th Century (1853)
• Four Georges (1860–1861) – ISBN 978-1410203007
• Roundabout Papers (1863)
• The Stray of Pimlico (1876)
• Sketches and Crossing in London
• Stray Papers: Being Lore, Reviews, Verses, and Sketches (1821–1847)
• Literary Essays
• The English Humorists of blue blood the gentry 18th century: a series summarize lectures (1867)
• Ballads
• Miscellanies
• Stories
• Burlesques
• Character Sketches
• Critical Reviews
• Second Exequies of Napoleon

Poems

• The Pigtail
• The Mahogany Tree (1847)

See also

References

Bibliography

External links