William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) was an English novelist, satirist and illustrator, the author of Vanity Fair. A sharp observer of snobbery and social climbing, he was considered in his time the great rival of Charles Dickens.
Calcutta to Cambridge
Thackeray was born on 18 July 1811 in Calcutta, where his father was an official of the East India Company. After his father's death he was sent to England at the age of five; he was unhappy at Charterhouse School and left Trinity College, Cambridge, without a degree.
He inherited a fortune and lost most of it through gambling and the failure of an Indian bank and of a newspaper he had invested in. He studied painting in Paris, and drew all his life, illustrating his own books.
Journalist and family man
In 1836 he married Isabella Shawe. After the birth of their third child, she fell into a mental illness from which she never recovered, and she lived in care for the rest of her long life. Thackeray brought up their two surviving daughters himself.
To earn his living he wrote for magazines, especially Fraser's Magazine and Punch, under pen names such as Michael Angelo Titmarsh. The Book of Snobs, published in Punch in 1846–1847, made the word 'snob' popular in its modern sense.
Vanity Fair and after
Vanity Fair appeared in monthly parts in 1847–1848, with his own drawings. Its story of Becky Sharp, an ambitious adventuress, and of Amelia Sedley, set at the time of Waterloo, made him famous. Pendennis, The History of Henry Esmond and The Newcomes followed.
He lectured in Britain and the United States, and in 1860 became the first editor of The Cornhill Magazine. He died in London on 24 December 1863, aged fifty-two. His daughter Anne became a novelist.
Anecdotes
A novel without a hero
Vanity Fair is subtitled 'A Novel without a Hero'. Thackeray took the title from John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, where Vanity Fair is a market town of worldly pleasures.
Rival of Dickens
Thackeray and Dickens were friends, then quarrelled in 1858 over a club dispute, and were reconciled only a few days before Thackeray's death. Dickens wrote a tribute to him in The Cornhill Magazine.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Becky Sharp?
The heroine of Vanity Fair, a clever and penniless young woman who uses charm and cunning to climb into high society.
Was Thackeray born in India?
Yes, in Calcutta in 1811, where his father worked for the East India Company.
What else did Thackeray write?
The Luck of Barry Lyndon, The Book of Snobs, Pendennis, The History of Henry Esmond, The Newcomes and the children's story The Rose and the Ring.