THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE (181 I 1863), English novelist, only son of Richmond and Anne Thack eray (whose maiden name was Becher), was born at Calcutta on the 18th of July 1811. His father and grandfather (W. R. Thack eray) had been Indian civil servants. His mother was nineteen at the date of his birth, was left a widow in 1816, and married Major Henry Carmichael Smyth in 1818. Thackeray went to school in Hampshire, Chiswick, and in 1822 to Charterhouse, still on its ancient site near Smithfield. In 1828 he left school to join his mother and her husband at Larkbeare in Devon, near Ottery St. Mary, which is the "Clavering St. Mary," as Exeter and Sid mouth are the "Chatteris" and "Baymouth" of Pendennis.
In February 1829 Thackeray went to Trinity College, Cam bridge, and contributed lines on "Timbuctoo," the subject for the Prize Poem (the prize for which was won by Tennyson), to a little paper called The Snob. James Spedding, Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton), Edward FitzGerald, and W. H. Thompson (afterwards Master of Trinity) were among his friends. In 1830 he left Cambridge without taking a degree. A visit to Weimar bore fruit in the sketches of life at a small German court which appear in FitzBoodle's Confessions and in Vanity Fair. In G. H. Lewes's Life of Goethe is a letter containing Thackeray's impressions of the German poet. On his return to England in 1831 he entered the Middle Temple, and found material for some capital scenes in Pendennis. In 1832 he inherited a sum which, according to Trollope, amounted to about five hundred a year. The money was soon lost—some in an Indian bank, some at play and some in two newspapers, The National Standard and The Constitutional. In Lovel the Widower these two papers are indicated under one name as The Museum, in connection with which Honeyman and Sherrick of The Newcomes are briefly brought in. Thackeray's adventures at play were utilized on three occasions, in "A Caution to Travellers" (The Paris Sketch-Book), in the first of the Deuceace narrations (The Memoirs of Mr. C. J. Yellowplush), and in Pendennis, vol. ii. chap. v., in a story told to Captain Strong by "Colonel Altamont." About 1834 Thackeray settled in Paris to study art seriously. He had, like Clive in The Newcomes, shown early talent as a caricaturist. His pencil was at its best technically in such fantastic work as is found in the initial letters of chapters, and in those drawings made for the amusement of child friends which were the origin of The Rose and the Ring.
In 1836 Thackeray married Isabella, daughter of Colonel Matthew Shawe. There were three daughters born of the mar riage, one dying in infancy. The eldest daughter, Anne Isabella married in 1877 (Sir) Richmond Ritchie, of the India Office. She inherited literary talent from her father and wrote several charming works of fiction, notably Miss Angel (1875), and subse quently edited Thackeray's works and published some volumes of criticism and reminiscences. The younger daughter, Harriet
Marian, married (Sir) Leslie Stephen in 1867 and died in 1875. Mrs. Thackeray, to quote Trollope, "became ill and her mind failed her," in 1840, and he "became as it were a widower to the end of his days"; she did not die till 1892.
In 1837 Thackeray came to London, and became a regular contributor to Fraser's Magazine. In this in 1841 appeared The History of Mr. Samuel Titmarsh and the Great Hoggarty Dia mond, a work filled with the wit, humour, satire, pathos, which found a more ordered if not a fresher expression in his later works. The characters are full of life; the book is crammed with honest fun; and for pure pathos, the death of the child stands in the company of very few such scenes in English fiction, but The Great Hoggarty Diamond, had to be cut short at the bidding of the editor. In 1840 came out The Paris Sketch-Book, much of which had been written and published at an earlier date. In 1838 Thackeray had begun, in Fraser, The Yellowplush Papers, with their strange touches of humour, satire, tragedy, and their fan tastic spelling; and this was followed by Catherine, a strong story, founded closely on the career of a criminal named Catherine Hayes, and intended to counteract the then growing practice of making ruffians and harlots prominent characters in fiction. When Pendennis was coming out in serial form (185o) another Catherine Hayes, an Irish singer and famous prima donna, was much before the public. Thackeray, thinking of the former and oblivious of the latter Catherine Hayes, caused a great outcry in the Irish press by coupling the name with that of a recently notorious murderer. He afterwards suppressed the passage but the incident is of interest because it explains the initial letter drawn by Thackeray for chap. xv., vol. ii., of Pendennis. The drawing is in itself highly comic, but must seem quite meaningless without the key. There soon followed Fitz-Boodle's Confessions and Professions, and the Shabby Genteel Story, a work interrupted by Thackeray's domes tic affliction and afterwards republished as an introduction to The Adventures of Philip, which took up the course of the original story many years after the supposed date of its catastrophe. In 1843 also came out the Irish Sketch-Book, and in 1844 the account of the journey From Cornhill to Grand Cairo), in which was in cluded the excellent poem of "The White Squall." In 1844 there began in Fraser the Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, called in the magazine "The Luck of Barry Lyndon, a Romance of the Last Century." His latter career is founded on that of Andrew Robin son Stoney Bowes, who married the widow of John, 9th earl of Strathmore.