Posted on 07/18/2011 6:03:48 PM PDT by Borges
Today marks British Victorian-era novelist and satirist William Makepeace Thackeray’s 200th birthday. Last night, reader Doug snapped a pic of a poster placed on the corner of NE. 45th St. at Thackeray Pl. NE., commemorating the occasion.
Among the dozen or so novels he wrote, Thackeray’s most famous works are Vanity Fair, The Luck of Barry Lyndon, The History of Henry Esmond, and its sequel, The Virginians.
Though historians claim Thackeray was second only to Dickens in terms of popularity, his biography doesn’t appear in my dusty, old Norton Anthology, so I relied on Wikipedia to provide you with some background:
Thackeray was born in Calcutta where his father was a civil servant for the East India Company. After his father died, the young boy was shipped off to England for school, though academia wasn’t really his thing. He dabbled in a little of this and a little of that, hung out in Paris and in the Weimar with Goethe for a little bit, then went back to England where he blew his inheritance on bad investments, including two newspapers.
After dropping out of law school, Thackeray married Isabella Gerthin Shawe. They had three daughters (one who died at age 8 months), and he began working for Fraser’s Magazine, and as a book reviewer for The Times. His wife suffered from postpartum depression after giving birth to their third daughter, and she never recovered. Thackeray placed her in a convalescent home in France, and he “became a de facto widower.”
In 1847, Thackeray published Vanity Fair as a serial, in which he poked fun at Britain’s high society. He went on to pen quite a few more novels, did a short stint at Cornhill Magazine as an editor, and actually tried his hand at politics, running as an Independent in the Oxford district for Parliament.
Thackeray died of a stroke on December 23, 1863, at the age of 52. Though he had suffered from some ailments during the course of his adult life, his death was a shock felt far and wide in Britain.
If you ever visit Westminster Abbey in London, you can see a memorial bust of Thackeray, sculpted by Carol Marochetti. To pay homage closer to home, take a stroll to NE. 45th and Thackeray Pl. NE. to wish his likeness a “Happy 200th Birthday!”
I love reading bios of authors. I imagine losing his fortune would provide incentive to write.
One of my all-time favorite movies : Barry Lyndon .
“Vanity Fair was a masterpiece.”
Yes, yes, absolutely brilliant!
Thanks for posting this, happy birthday to Mr. Thackeray.
I’ve always wished to give the name Makepeace as a middle name to a child. Sadly I only had one child, so she got Elizabeth.
But maybe, some future child, it could happen!
Nice to know someone in Seattle, of all places, is celebrating this.
And Slings, my very educated mother told me that Becky Sharp is the very first of the “b*tch heroines”.
I think VF is a very important book and it certainly is rollicking!
I would call her a villain protagonist rather than any kind of heroine, but yes, she was revolutionary. (As was VF)
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