He appears to have written for Galignani's Messenger, and then to have gone to London, where his first daughter (afterward Mrs. Ritchie [q.v.]) was born. He reviewed books for The Times and contributed articles and stories to Fraser's and other magazines, dis playing an abundance of energy and cleverness, but, partly through anonymity and the use of pseudonyms, attracting little attention. From November 1837, to August 1838, the
Correspondence' appeared in Fraser's and later in the latter year was pirated in America, a country which appreciated Thackeray before England did. There was surely enough humor and satiric power in his early work to have gained it more cordial rec ognition; but there was ,also much irony, which rarely makes a writer popular, and there were attacks on favorite authors like Bulwer that could not have been relished in some quarters. At any rate it seems certain that when in 1839 N. P. Willis (q.v.) engaged him to write for The Corsair, a short-lived New York weekly, Thackeray was almost as unknown as his younger rival, Charles Dickens, was famous.
The ironical 'Catherine,' which finished its
Course in Fraser's in February 1840, and ought to have shown contemporaries how well its author knew the 18th century and could follow the lead of Fielding, the two volumes of the
'A Shabby Genteel Story) was cut short by the severe illness of Mrs. Thackeray, which fol lowed the birth of her third daughter, later Mrs. Leslie Stephen. On returning from a trip to Belgium her husband found her strangely changed in mind. There were hopes that she might recover, and Thackeray gave her very constant attention, at home, in Ireland and on the Continent; but it was of no avail. She was finally placed with a kind family and survived her husband about 30 years. The two little girls, for one daughter had died in infancy (cf. The Great Hoggarty Diamond,' 1841) were sent to his mother in. Paris, and Thackeray set himself to work all the harder in order that he might ensure their support and that of his wife, should his own life be cut short. He had no thought of freeing himself by law, and, al though suffering deeply as such a tender-hearted man was bound to do, he went about his work cheerfully, solacing himself as well as he could with club life and enjoying Bohemian haunts such as the ((Cave of Harmony," described in
Newcomes.) In 1841 he published his, interesting small volume
never liked a villain for a hero and is uncom fortable in the presence of a writer with a genius for irony, hence Thackeray's masterly memoir of an irrepressible Irish rascal, although it gives a brilliant picture of European life, high and low, in the 18th century and is per haps inferior only to 'Jonathan Wild' as a piece of sustained irony, will probably con tinue to be praised by the critics and eschewed by the general reader.
Meanwhile Thackeray had formed a connec tion that gave him not only a reliable source of income, but also an organ in which he could publish anything he cared to draw or write, with the result that his creative faculty was stimu lated and made copious. From June 1842 until 1851 he was one of the most important members of the staff of Punch, which had begun its career in July 1841. 'Miss Tickletoby's Lec tures on English History,' with which his con tributions practically began, naturally fell rather flat, but his copy improved, his sketches were generally appreciated and no one was more at home at the famous 'Punch' dinners, where the policy of the journal was shaped. His first great success was made with (Jeames's November 1845. This satire on railway-stock gambling was followed by the famous 'Snobs of England, by One of Themselves,' which began on 28 Feb. 1846 and ran for a yeat. Thackeray discovered snobs in altogether too many quarters, perhaps, and he has been accused of overlooking one at home; but it was only natural that he should work a good vein to the point of exhaustion and some of his papers were very clever. Most of them were reprinted as 'The Book of Snobs) in 1848. His next series, to-day more attractive to some readers, was his 'Prize Novelists,' excellent burlesques, which ran from April to October 1847, and took off, without malice and with very great clever ness, such popular writers as Bulwer, Disraeli, G. P. R. James, Lever and Cooper. One, 'Crinoline, by Je—mes Pl—sh, Esq.' was a takeoff of Thackeray himself. These were only the leading things he contributed to Punch. Probably they are not so attractive to many readers to-day as some of his ballads and songs — particularly such a perfect piece of occasional poetry as 'The Cane-Bottomed Chair.> His increasing success enabled him in 1846 to take a house and bring his daughters back from Paris to a home of their own. In this house, 13 Young street, he wrote 'Vanity Fair,' which was published, as the fashion then was, in monthly parts. In January 1847, it began to appear in yellow-covered pamphlets issued by the publishers of Punch, and it ran till July 1848, when a double number was given. This method of publication was bad, because it did not force the author to complete his work and thus get the opportunity to see and criticize it as a whole before committing himself to type. It conduced also to spasmodic writing and to pad ding. Most of Thackeray's longer stories show the evil effects of the part system, and so do the novels of Dickens and Lever.