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WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 
(1811-1863) 
William Makepeace Thackeray was born in the family of a prominent official in Calcutta. In 
1817, the boy was sent to England where he went to school and in 1828 entered the Cambridge 
University. While at the university, Thackeray displayed a talent for drawing and edited a 
student paper. The stagnant atmosphere of the place irked Thackeray so that finally he left the 
University. In 1830, he went traveling over Germany, Italy and France, going in for self-
education and art studies. On his return to England in 1833, he took up journalism. 
In 1846-47, Thackeray published “The Book of Snobs”. The book admirably draws a gallery of 
English “snobs” from different walks of life. In Thackeray’s view, a snob is a person who fawns 
upon his social superiors and looks down with contempt upon his inferiors. In his book, the 
author declares war against snobbism, vanity and selfishness. “The Book of Snobs” may be 
considered as a kind of prelude to the author’s major work “Vanity Fair”.
In the forties, Thackeray’s creative method as that of a realistic writer becomes firmly 
established. A brilliant example of this method and one of the greatest masterpieces of literature 
under critical realism is his “Vanity Fair”, a novel without a hero, published in 1847-48. Along 
with snobbery, the book treats of a more significant theme – portrayal of the world which is 
under the influence of money and hypocritical morals.
“Vanity Fair” was the peak of Thackeray’s creative realism.

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Similar ideas characterize another work of this period – “Memoir of the Most Respectable 
Family of the Newcomes” (1833-55). In other two novels “The History of Henry Esmonde” 
(1852) and “The Virginians” (1857-58) Thackeray turns to historic subjects which he treats with 
a realistic approach. The action of “Henry Esmonde” is laid in England at the beginning of the 
18
th
century during the reign of Queen Anne. “Henry Esmonde” gives a truthful picture of 
England of that time. The author vividly portrays the life of English aristocracy filled with 
debauchery, gambling and dueling. The author shows how unscrupulously the aristocrats trade 
not only with their honor but with their own country. Henry Esmonde, a man of great and 
magnanimous heart lives an acute tragedy being a total stranger in an alien world.
The “Virginians”, a sequel to “Henry Esmonde”, tells of the life of Henry Esmonde’s two 
grandsons in England and America. The portrayal of social life here is rather limited. The greater 
part of the book deals with young men’s adventures during the American war of independence. 
The strongest point of the novel is the critical and often comical description of English 
fashionable life. 
During the last years of his life Thackeray worked on the novel “Denis Duval”, which remained 
unfinished due to the author’s premature death in 1863.