THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE (1811 63). A famous English novelist. Ile was born in Calcutta, where his father was at the time in the service of the East India Company, July 18, 1811. At the age of six the boy was sent to England, his father having meantime died, and placed in the care of an aunt; but in 1821 his mother returned with her second husband and settled near Ottery Saint Nary in Devon shire. The boy regarded her as 'a daughter of the gods,' and his stepfather, it is asserted, was the original of Colonel After attend ing two small schools, Thackeray entered Charter house, of which also he has given a vivid de scription in The and remained there six years (1822-28). Then he spent a little over a year at Cambridge, as a member of Trinity College and of the brilliant society of which Tennyson (q.v.) was another ornament. After this he spent two years abroad, staying some time at Weimar, where Ile met Goethe. On his return to England he studied law for a while at the Middle Temple, which furnished some of the material for Pcndeunis. On his coming of age, he inherited a fortune estimated at £20,000, but much of it was lost by the failure of an Indian bank, and he had to depend on his own exertions for a living. In 1833 he became editor and proprietor of the National Standard, a periodi cal devoted to art and literature, hut it lived only about a year. after which he spent some time in Paris studying art. He otTered to illus trate Pickwick, but his services were declined by Dickens. In 1836 he became Paris corre spondent for the Constitutional, and married Isabella, daughter of Colonel Shawe of the In dian army.
After his marriage he settled in London, and contributed regularly to Fraser's Magazine. His first book was Fiore et Zephyre by Theophile Wagstaff (1836), with nine comic plates from his own drawings. Some of the satirical char acter sketches and humorous tales which he wrote for Fraser's were collected, as in The Yellowplush Papers (1838), The Paris Sketch Book (1840). and The Irish Sketch-Book (1843). In 1842 he began writing for Punch, to which he contributed nearly four hundred sketches. The most successful were Jeamels
Diary (1845-46), the Prize Novelists (1847), and the Snob Papers (1846-47). Thackeray had now proved himself a master of burlesque, and an acute critic of contemporary manners. In their kind nothing could be better than the Prize Novelists and Rebecca and Rowena, in which he exaggerates the weaknesses of Bulwer, Disraeli, Lever, Cooper, and Scott. Barry Lyn don, a mock defense of gambling (1844), is superb. He had also begun, as he continued throughout life, to write occasional verse, com monly in the ballad measure, at will grave and pathetic or richly humorous.
In 1846-48 Vanity Fair appeared in monthly parts, and Thackeray assumed his place in English literature by the side of Field ing. This, with his other great novels, Pcnden nis (1849-50), Henry Esmond (1852), and The Neweomes (1854-55), shows him at the height of his power. Somewhat inferior, but still to be mentioned in this context, are The Virginians (1858) and The Adventures of Philip (1862). Henry Esmond, especially, has taken rank by uni versal consent at the very head of English histor ical fiction. To say nothing of its other merits, it is an absolute faithful reproduction, not only of the language, but of the thought and the man ners of the early eighteenth century. This was a period by which Thaekeray was always strongly attracted; Addison, Swift, Steele, and the eight eenth-century novelists were his masters in lit erature. He even thought of writing a history of the century; and his studies took shape in the delightful lectures on The English Humor ists. These he delivered in America in 1852 and 1353, with such success that he came again in 1855 with The Four Georges. In 1857 he tried for Parliament, standing for Oxford in the Lib eral interests, but was fortunately defeated. In 1S60 he became the first editor of the Cornhill Magazine, for which be wrote his last novels and the Roundabout Papers (1860-63). a series of essays and sketches which are the best revelation of the man and of his large heart.