WILLIAM THACKERAY (1811-1863)

INTRODUCTION

-Whom was William Thackeray-The short biography-Some expressive moments of his

life(Marriage,Troubled Times , Responsibilities,The Brookfields, Controversy With Charles Dickens)

-The best books he wrote-History of his books-Later Years -Conclusion

Whom was William Thackeray

William Makepeace Thackeray was the second representative of critical realism in English Literature of the 19th century.Dickens and Thackeray were such near contemporaries that their work was often compared,but Thackeray`s life was different from that of Charles Dickens.

The short biography William Makepeace Thackeray was born in

Calcutta, India, as the only son of Richmond Thackeray, a Collector in the East Indian Company's service. After his father died he was sent to home to England. He was educated at Charterhouse and at Trinity College, Cambridge. Thackeray abandoned his studies without taking a degree, having lost some of his inheritance of twenty thousand pounds through gambling. In the beginning of the 1830s he visited Germany, where he met Goethe.

During 1831-33 Thackeray studied law at the Middle Temple, London, but had little enthusiasm to continue his studies. In 1833 he brought with a large heritage the National Standard, but lost his fortune a year later in the Indian bank failures and other bad investments. According to an anecdote, Thackeray offered to undertake the task of illustrating Dickens's Pickwick Papers in 1836, but the author himself found Thackeray's drawings unsuitable.

Some expressive moments of his life

Thackeray began to contribute regularly to Fraser's Magazine, Morning Chronicle, New Monthly Magazine and The Times. His writings attracted first attention in Punch, where he satirized English snobbery. These sketches reappeared in 1848 as THE BOOK OF SNOBS, in which he stated that "he who meanly admires mean things is a Snob."

In 1840 Isabella Thackeray suffered a mental breakdown, from which she never recovered, through she survived Thackeray by thirty years. The author was forced to send his children to France to his mother. The children returned to England in 1846 to live with him.

Marriage He met Isabella Shawe, a timid, simple and artless girl. He

fell outrightly in love with Isabella. She was just 17 and was totally under control of her mother. He was immediately ready for marriage, but Mrs Shawe did not permit. Isabella herself could not make any decision. Similarly, his parents were also much reluctant for the union. His stepfather wanted him to establish himself first, for that Thackeray was made the Paris correspondent for a newspaper The Constitutional and Public Register at Ј400 per year. Backed by the income and through his steady persistence, the marriage did take place finally on August 20, 1836. After trying out briefly the bohemian life of an artist in Paris, and failure of his newspaper, he returned to London in 1837 and started his career as a journalist. He worked for periodicals like Fraser's Magazine and The Morning Chronicle, but his most successful association was with Punch. Thackeray worked as a freelance journalist for about 10 years, publishing literary criticism, art criticism, articles, and fiction, either anonymously or under a number of comic pseudonyms. Often he used absurd pen names such as George Savage Fitzboodle, Michael Angelo Tit Marsh, Theophile Wagstaff and C J Yellowplush, Esq. William and Isabella Thackeray's first child, Anne Isabella, was born on June 9, 1837. Her birth was followed by the collapse of The Constitution of which William was the Paris correspondent. Thackeray began writing as many articles as humanly possible and sent them to any newspaper that would print them.

PARIS FASHIONS FOR JANUARY, 1864.

Troubled Times Thackeray and Isabella Shawe had a happy

life during their first years of marriage. But as financial demands forced Thackeray into more and more work, Isabella became isolated and lonely. The happy years of marriage was eclipsed by the tragic death of their second daughter Jane, born in July 1838. She died of respiratory illness in March the following year. Harriet Marian, their third daughter was born in 1840. It was at this time that Isabella fell victim to mental illness . After a few months she started displaying suicidal tendencies and as it was difficult to control her, she was placed in a private institution. Doctors told Thackeray that all she needed was a change of air. She was taken to her mother in Ireland, where she attempted to drown herself in the ocean. Thackeray began a series of futile searches for her cure. He took Isabella to various spas and sanatoriums, at one point himself undergoing a 'water cure' with her, since she wouldn't go at it alone. He continued to hope for some time that she would make a full recovery. He was forced to send his children to France to his mother

Responsibilities Thackeray's children returned to England in

1846. He gradually began paying more and more attention to his daughters, for whom he established a home in London. Eventually, he resigned himself to Isabella's condition and was seemingly indifferent to the circumstances around her and the children. He raised his daughters with the help of his mother, who was never satisfied with the governess's Thackeray hired. The touching reminiscences of Anne Thackeray's biographical introductions to his works portray him as a loving, if busy, father. He started the serial publication of his novel Vanity Fair in 1847. It brought Thackeray both fame and prosperity. From then on he was an established author on the English literary scene. Dickens was then at the height of his fame, and, though the two men appreciated each other's work, their admirers were fond of debating their comparative merits.

The Brookfields During these years of success, Thackeray lived the

life of a bachelor in London. He spent much time with his friends, attending the social functions of a fashionable society. He became the constant attendant upon Jane Brookfield, the wife of an old friend from Cambridge. Thackeray and the Brookfields were involved in an increasingly tense emotional triangle. His first trip to America in 1852 provided the time and distance for Thackeray to try and extricate himself from the tangle. Henry Brookfield's coldness and desire to dominate his wife, her resistance and the need for someone to turn to, and Thackeray's loneliness combined to create a complicated affair. Brookfield alternately ignored or forbade his wife's warm communications with the successful novelist. Jane Brookfield returned Thackeray's ardent expressions of friendship and lamented her husband's inability to understand her. Thackeray, for his part, professed for Jane a devotion that was pure and he also remained a companion of her husband. He nonetheless felt betrayed by Jane's tendency to cool down the correspondence when Brookfield complained

Controversy With Charles Dickens

Of the several literary quarrels in which Thackeray got involved during his life, the 'Garrick Club affair' is best remembered. Charles Dickens had always been one of Thackeray's earliest and best friends. But a quarrel had arisen and for several years the two men were not on talking terms. Thackeray had taken offense at some personal remarks in a column by Edmund Yates and demanded an apology, eventually taking the affair to the Garrick Club committee. Dickens was already upset with Thackeray for an indiscreet remark about his affair with Ellen Ternan and so he championed Yates. Dickens helped Yates to draft letters both to Thackeray, and in his defense, to the club's committee. Despite Dickens' intervention,

The best books he wrote THE YELLOWPLUSH PAPERS, 1838 CATHERINE, 1839 THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK, 1840 THE HISTORY OF SAMUEL TITMARSH AND THE GREAT HOGGARTY DIAMOND, 1841 - Samuel Titmarsh eli tarina isosta Hoggartyn

timantista THE IRIS SKETCH BOOK, 1843 THE LUCK OF BARRY LYNDON, 1844 (rev. in 1856 as THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ.) - film 1975, dir. by Stanley Kubrick,

starring Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Hardy Kruger. Kubrick wanted to recreate on screen the look of 18th-century paintings and so set out to film the movie without any artifical lighting at all.

NOTES OF A JOUNEY FROM CORNHILL TO GRAND CAIRO, 1846 THE BOOK OF SNOBS, 1848 VANITY FAIR, 1847-48 - Turhuuden turuilla - films: 1935, Becky Sharp, dir. by Rouben Mamoulian, starring Miriam Hopkins, Cedric

Hardwicke, Frances Dee; 2004, dir. by Mira Nair, starring Reese Witherspoon, James Purefoy, Eileen Atkins, Gabriel Byrne THE HISTORY OF PENDENNIS, 1848-50 REBECCA AND ROWENA, 1850 THE ENGLISH HUMOURISTS OF THE 18TH CENTURY, 1851 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND, ESQ., 1852, 3 vol. - Henry Esmondin tarina hänen itsensä kertomana (trans. by Martta Räsänen) THE ENGLISH HUMORISTS OF THE 18TH CENTURY, 1853 THE NEWCOMES, 1853-55 THE ROSE AND THE RING, 1855 MISCELLANIES, 4 vol., 1855-57 THE VIRGINIANS, 1857-59 THE FOUR GEORGES, 1860 LOVEL THE WIDOWER, 1860 POEMS AND ESSAYS, 1860 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD, 1862 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS, 1860-63 DENIS DUVAL, 1864 COLLECTED ED., 1867-69 LETTERS AND PRIVATE PAPERS, 1945-46

Vanity Fair(1848)

It’s the book of social realism,wich brought great fame to the novelist,and remains his most-read work up to the present day.It appeared 1st in 24 monthly instalments which Thackeray

illustrated himself,and then in 1848,as a complete book

The history of Pendennis(1850)

One of the earliest and greatest of the Victorian Bildungsroman, this introspective novel treats London's bohemian and literary underworld and the romantic entanglements of its hero, Arthur Pendennis, with comic and uninhibited style. Son of a selfless widow, Pendennis moves from one disastrous romantic involvement to another on the fringes of the corrupt upper classes. Thackeray had slaved for ten years in this literary bohemia; the introduction considers the parallels between Thackeray's life and the novel, and examines the changes taking place in Victorian England throughout the years of the story

Rebecca and Rowena (1850)

A satire on the Victorian admiration for all things medieval, this early work by the author of Vanity Fair is decidedly contrary—a self-confessed "middle-aged novel" that begins where most novels end: with marriage. Rebecca and Rowena calls into question the ending of Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, exploring the miserable marriage of Sir Wilfrid to the "icy, faultless, prim" Rowena. In an irreverent and theatrical plot, in which the dead come back to life, marriage is exposed as really quite dull, and imperialism is mocked mercilessly, Thackeray ridiculously reunites Ivanhoe with his first love

The English Humourists(1852) William Thackeray (1811-63) began as a

journalist and produced his first critique in 1837, and his first novel in 1841. His association with Punch began in 1842 and articles continued until 1854. In 1851 he gave a series of lectures on 'The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century' in cities around England and later the USA. This collection of potted biographies comprises Jonathan Swift; Congreve and Addison; Richard Steele; Prior, Gay and Pope; Hogarth, Smollet and Fielding; Sterne and Goldsmith. These seven lectures were delivered on Thackeray's American tour of 1852, but only the six lectures pertaining to English authors were published in England; the seventh - "Charity and Humour" - appeared here for the first time. These lectures were a great success with the Victorian public, and remain a witty, enjoyable and affectionate comment on the period by one of England's greatest writers.

The Newcomes(1855) The Newcomes (1853-5)

concerns a self-made man, Sir Brian Newcome, whose marriage into the aristocratic Kew family brings titled respectability to his family's "new" money. Now the marriage of his daughter Ethel is of crucial importance to both families' quest for further advancement. A revelatory and hugely witty excursion among the hypocritical upperclass, The Newcomes memorializes the evolution of an age.

The Rose and the Ring Between the kingdoms of Paflagonia and

Crim Tartary, there lived a mysterious personage, who was known in those countries as the Fairy Blackstick, from the ebony wand or crutch which she carried; on which she rode to the moon sometimes, or upon other excursions of business or pleasure, and with which she performed her wonders. When she was young, and had been first taught the art of conjuring by the necromancer, her father, she was always practicing her skill, whizzing about from one kingdom to another upon her black stick, and conferring her fairy favors upon this Prince or that.

Later Years It was as if Thackeray had an intuition that he

must make haste to hail and farewell to his old friend. It was only a few nights later - December 23, 1863 - that he went to sleep for the last time. He was found dead on the morning of Christmas Eve. The master had called the roll; and Thackeray, like the beloved Colonel Newcome in one of his novels, responded gently, "Adsum - I am here." Towards the end of his life, Thackeray was proud that through his writings, he had regained the patrimony lost to bank failures and gambling. He passed on to his daughters an inheritance sufficient for their support and also a grand house in Kensington. He was buried in the Kensal Green Cemetery on December 30. An estimated 2000 mourners came to pay tribute, among them was Charles Dickens. After his death, a commemorative bust was placed in Westminster Abbey.

Conclusion

The picture of the of ruling classes of England created by Thackeray remains a classic example of social satire to this very day.

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