William Makepeace Thackeray

Thackeray, William Makepeace (1811-63), English novelist most known for his Vanity Fair (1847–48), a novel of the Napoleonic period in England, and The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. (1852), set in the early 18th century.

Thackeray was born July 18, 1811, in Calcutta, India, into a wealthy English merchant family. In 1829 Thackeray entered the University of Cambridge. Leaving the university without taking his degree, he attempted to develop his literary and artistic abilities, first as the editor of a short-lived journal and subsequently as an art student in Paris. In 1840, despite a series of financial reverses and the mental illness of his wife, Thackeray produced The Paris Sketchbook, a series of reprints of his contributions to various literary journals. Comic Tales and Sketches (1841) contained the Yellowplush Papers, Major Gahagan, and the Bedford Row Conspiracy. After joining the staff of the humorous journal Punch in 1842, he published the Irish Sketchbook in 1843 and Cornhill to Cairo in 1847.

Thackeray began the serial publication of his great satirical novel Vanity Fair early in 1847, quickly establishing a reputation as one of the major literary figures of his time. In such subsequent novels as Henry Esmond (1852), The Newcomes (1853), and The Virginians (1857), he broadened his observation of social situations to various eras and locales. These widely acclaimed works had a strong historical aspect and they brought Thackeray new recognition. He became a principal competitor of his great contemporary, Charles Dickens, with whom he frequently disagreed on the nature of the novel as a vehicle for social commentary.

After lecturing in the U.S., Thackeray edited the Cornhill Magazine (1860-62). He contributed two of his lesser novels, Lovel the Widower and The Adventures of Philip, to the journal, and his work with the magazine suggested ideas for his humorous essays, The Roundabout Papers. In 1862 he gave up his editorship because he was unwilling to refuse manuscripts, but he continued to work for the magazine, beginning his last novel, Denis Duval, shortly before his death on December 24, 1863, in London. After he died in 1863, a commemorative bust of him was placed in Westminster Abbey.

With Vanity Fair (1847–48), the first work published under his own name, Thackeray adopted the system of publishing a novel serially in monthly parts that had been so successfully used by Dickens. The picture of London in the book is presented as a big fair where everything is bought and sold. Set in the second decade of the 19th century, the period of the Regency, the novel deals mainly with the interwoven fortunes of two contrasting women, Amelia Sedley and Becky Sharp. The latter, an unprincipled adventuress, is the leading personage and is perhaps the most memorable character Thackeray created. Subtitled “A Novel Without a Hero,” the novel is deliberately antiheroic: Thackeray states that in this novel his object is to “indicate... that we are for the most part... foolish and selfish people... all eager after vanities.”

The wealthy, wellborn, passive Amelia Sedley and the ambitious, energetic, scheming, provocative, and essentially immoral Becky Sharp, daughter of a poor drawing master, are contrasted in their fortunes and reactions to life, but the contrast of their characters is not the simple one between moral good and evil—both are presented with dispassionate sympathy. Becky is the character around whom all the men play their parts in an upper middle-class and aristocratic background. Amelia marries George Osborne, but George, just before he is killed at the Battle of Waterloo, is ready to desert his young wife for Becky, who has fought her way up through society to marriage with Rawdon Crawley, a young officer of good family. Crawley, disillusioned, finally leaves Becky, and in the end virtue apparently triumphs, Amelia marries her lifelong admirer, Colonel Dobbin, and Becky settles down to genteel living and charitable works.

Unlike Dickens who portrayed his characters either good or bad, Thackeray is more objective. He doesn’t label his heroes. He leaves it to the reader to judge.

The rich movement and colour of this panorama of early 19th-century society make Vanity Fair Thackeray's greatest achievement; the narrative skill, subtle characterization, and descriptive power make it one of the outstanding novels of its period. But Vanity Fair is more than a portrayal and imaginative analysis of a particular society. Throughout we are made subtly aware of the ambivalence of human motives, and so are prepared for Thackeray's conclusion: “Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire, or having it, is satisfied?” It is its tragic irony that makes Vanity Fair a lasting and insightful evaluation of human ambition and experience.

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