William Makepeace Thackeray

Works
Thackeray began as a satirist and parodist, writing works that displayed a sneaking fondness for roguish upstarts such
as Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair, and the title characters of The Luck of Barry Lyndon and Catherine. In his earliest works,
written under such pseudonyms as Charles James Yellowplush, Michael Angelo Titmarsh and George Savage FitzBoodle, he tended towards savagery in his attacks on high society, military prowess, the institution of marriage and
hypocrisy.
One of his earliest works, "Timbuctoo" (1829), contains a burlesque upon the subject set for the Cambridge Chancellor's
Medal for English Verse (the contest was won by Tennyson with "Timbuctoo"). Thackeray's writing career really began
with a series of satirical sketches now usually known as The Yellowplush Papers, which appeared in Fraser's
Magazine beginning in 1837. These were adapted for BBC Radio 4 in 2009, with Adam Buxton playing Charles
Yellowplush.[8]
Between May 1839 and February 1840 Fraser's published the work sometimes considered Thackeray's first
novel, Catherine. Originally intended as a satire of the Newgate school of crime fiction, it ended up being more of
a picaresque tale. He also began work, never finished, on the novel later published as A Shabby Genteel Story.
In The Luck of Barry Lyndon, a novel serialised in Fraser's in 1844, Thackeray explored the situation of an outsider trying
to achieve status in high society, a theme he developed more successfully in Vanity Fair with the character of Becky
Sharp, the artist's daughter who rises nearly to the heights by manipulating the other characters.
Thackeray is probably best known now for Vanity Fair. In contrast, his large novels from the period after Vanity Fair,
which were once described by Henry James as examples of "loose baggy monsters", have largely faded from view,
perhaps because they reflect a mellowing in Thackeray, who had become so successful with his satires on society that
he seemed to lose his zest for attacking it. These later works include Pendennis, a Bildungsroman depicting the coming
of age of Arthur Pendennis, an alter ego of Thackeray, who also features as the narrator of two later novels, The
Newcomes and The Adventures of Philip. The Newcomes is noteworthy for its critical portrayal of the "marriage market,"
while Philip is known for its semi-autobiographical depiction of Thackeray's early life, in which he partially regains some
of his early satirical power.
Also notable among the later novels is The History of Henry Esmond, in which Thackeray tried to write a novel in the
style of the eighteenth century, a period that held great appeal for him. Not only Esmond but also Barry
Lyndon and Catherine are set in that period, as is the sequel to Esmond, The Virginians, which takes place in North
America and includes George Washington as a character who nearly kills one of the protagonists in a duel.

Family

Parents
Thackeray's father, Richmond Thackeray, was born at South Mimms and went to India in 1798 at age sixteen as a writer
(civil servant) with the East India Company. Richmond fathered a daughter, Sarah Redfield, in 1804 with Charlotte
Sophia Rudd, his possibly Eurasian mistress, and both mother and daughter were named in his will. Such liaisons were
common among gentlemen of the East India Company, and it formed no bar to his later courting and marrying William's
mother.[9]
Thackeray's mother, Anne Becher (born 1792), was "one of the reigning beauties of the day" and a daughter of John
Harmon Becher, Collector of the South 24 Parganas district (d. Calcutta, 1800), of an old Bengal civilian family "noted for
the tenderness of its women". Anne Becher, her sister Harriet and their widowed mother, also Harriet, had been sent
back to India by her authoritarian guardian grandmother, Ann Becher, in 1809 on the Earl Howe. Anne's grandmother
had told her that the man she loved, Henry Carmichael-Smyth, an ensign in the Bengal Engineers whom she met at an
Assembly Ball in 1807 in Bath, had died, while he was told that Anne was no longer interested in him. Neither of these
assertions was true. Though Carmichael-Smyth was from a distinguished Scottish military family, Anne's grandmother
went to extreme lengths to prevent their marriage. Surviving family letters state that she wanted a better match for her
granddaughter.[10]

Anne Becher and Richmond Thackeray were married in Calcutta on 13 October 1810. Their only child, William, was born
on 18 July 1811.[11] There is a fine miniature portrait of Anne Becher Thackeray and William Makepeace Thackeray, aged
about two, done in Madras by George Chinnery c. 1813.[12]
Anne's family's deception was unexpectedly revealed in 1812, when Richmond Thackeray unwittingly invited the
supposedly dead Carmichael-Smyth to dinner. Five years later, after Richmond had died of a fever on 13 September
1815, Anne married Henry Carmichael-Smyth, on 13 March 1817. The couple moved to England in 1820, after having
sent William off to school there more than three years earlier. The separation from his mother had a traumatic effect on
the young Thackeray, which he discussed in his essay "On Letts's Diary" in The Roundabout Papers.