Education
Before Charterhouse School Thackeray was educated at schools in Southampton and Chiswick.
As the novelist was never too keen on academic studies, he left the University in 1830. At Middle Temple he also studied not so long.
Before Charterhouse School Thackeray was educated at schools in Southampton and Chiswick.
As the novelist was never too keen on academic studies, he left the University in 1830. At Middle Temple he also studied not so long.
Thackeray worked for Fraser's Magazine, a sharp-witted and sharp-tongued conservative publication, for which he produced art criticism, short fictional sketches, and two longer fictional works, Catherine and The Luck of Barry Lyndon. From 1837 to 1840 he also reviewed books for The Times. Later, through his connection to the illustrator John Leech, he began writing for the newly created Punch magazine, where he published The Snob Papers, later collected as The Book of Snobs. This work popularised the modern meaning of the word "snob."
In the early 1840s, Thackeray had some success with two travel books, The Paris Sketch Book and The Irish Sketch Book. He achieved more recognition with his Snob Papers (serialised 1846/7, published in book form in 1848), but the work that really established his fame was the novel Vanity Fair. Even before Vanity Fair completed its serial run, Thackeray had become a celebrity, sought after by the very lords and ladies whom he satirised; they hailed him as the equal of Dickens. He remained "at the top of the tree," as he put it, for the remaining decade and a half of his life, producing several large novels, notably Pendennis, The Newcomes, and The History of Henry Esmond. He twice visited the United States on lecture tours during this period.
Thackeray also gave lectures in London on the English humourists of the eighteenth century, and on the first four Hanoverian monarchs. The latter series was published in book form as The Four Georges.
In 1860 Thackeray became editor of the newly established Cornhill Magazine, but was never comfortable as an editor, preferring to contribute to the magazine as a columnist, producing his Roundabout Papers for it.
The Yellowplush Papers (1837)
Catherine (1839–40)
A Shabby Genteel Story (1840)
The Irish Sketchbook (1843)
The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844), filmed as Barry Lyndon by Stanley Kubrick
Notes of a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo (1846), under the name Mr M.A. Titmarsh.
The Book of Snobs (1848), which popularised that term-
Vanity Fair (1848)
Pendennis (1848–1850)
Rebecca and Rowena (1850), a parody sequel of Ivanhoe
The Paris Sketchbook (1840), featuring Roger Bontemps
Men's Wives (1852)
The History of Henry Esmond (1852)
The Newcomes (1855)
The Rose and the Ring (1855)
The Virginians (1857–1859)
The Adventures of Philip (1862)
Roundabout Papers (1863)
Denis Duval (1864) –
Sketches and Travels in London
Stray Papers: Being Stories, Reviews, Verses, and Sketches (1821-1847)
Literary Essays:
English Humourists
Four Georges
Lovel the Widower
Ballads
Christmas Books
Samuel Titmarsh
Miscellanies
Stories
The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon Esq
Burlesques
Irish Sketchbook volume 2
Character Sketches
Critical Reviews
Second Funeral of Napoleon
He was a secretary to the board of revenue in the British East India Company.
She was the second daughter of Harriet Becher and John Harman Becher, who was also a secretary (writer) for the East India Company.
Isabella was a second daughter of Isabella Creagh Shawe and Matthew Shawe, a colonel, who had died after extraordinary service, primarily in India.
William and Isabella got married on 20 August, 1836. They had three children, all girls: Anne Isabella (1837–1919), Jane (died at 8 months) and Harriet Marian (1840–1875). The novelist now began "writing for his life," as he put it, turning to journalism in an effort to support his young family.
Tragedy struck in his personal life as his wife succumbed to depression after the birth of their third child in 1840. Finding he could get no work done at home, he spent more and more time away, until September of that year, when he realised how grave her condition was. Struck by guilt, he took his ailing wife to Ireland. During the crossing she threw herself from a water-closet into the sea, but she was pulled from the waters. They fled back home after a four-week domestic battle with her mother. From November 1840 to February 1842 she was in and out of professional care, her condition waxing and waning. She eventually deteriorated into a permanent state of detachment from reality, unaware of the world around her.Thackeray desperately sought cures for her, but nothing worked, and she ended up confined in a home near Paris. She remained there until 1893, outliving her husband by thirty years. After his wife's illness, Thackeray became a de facto widower, never establishing another permanent relationship.
