Thackeray, an lone kid, was born in Calcutta, India, where his male parent, Richmond Thackeray ( 1 September 1781 & # 8211 ; 13 September 1815 ) , held the high rank of secretary to the board of gross in the British East India Company. Richmond Thackeray, born at South Mimms, went to India at the age of 16 to presume his responsibilities as author. By 1804 he had fathered a girl by a native kept woman, the female parent and girl being named in his will. Such affairs being common among gentlemen of the East India Company, it formed no saloon to his courtship and get marrieding Anne Becher. Anne Becher ( 1792 & # 8211 ; 1864 ) was the 2nd girl of Harriet and John Harman Becher, besides a author for the East India Company. They sent Anne abroad in 1809, stating her that the adult male she loved, Henry Carmichael-Smyth, had died. This was non true, but her household wanted a better matrimony for her than with Carmichael-Smyth, a military adult male. She married Richmond Thackeray on 13 October 1810. The truth was out of the blue revealed in 1812, when Richmond Thackeray inadvertently invited to dinner the purportedly dead Carmichael-Smyth. After Richmond ‘s decease, Henry Carmichael-Smyth married Anne in 1818 and they returned to England the following twelvemonth.
William had been sent to England before, at the age of five, with a short way station at St. Helena where the captive Napoleon was pointed out to him. He was educated at schools in Southampton and Chiswick and so at Charterhouse School, where he was a close friend of John Leech. He disliked Charterhouse, parodying it in his ulterior fiction as “ Slaughterhouse. ” Illness in his last twelvemonth at that place ( during which he reportedly grew to his full tallness of 6’3 ” ) postponed his matriculation at Trinity College, Cambridge, until February 1829. Never excessively lament on academic surveies, he left the University in 1830.
He traveled for some clip on the continent, sing Paris and Weimar, where he met Goethe. He returned to England and began to analyze jurisprudence at the Middle Temple, but shortly gave that up. On making the age of 21 he came into his heritage but he squandered much of it on chancing and by funding two unsuccessful newspapers, The National Standard and The Constitutional for which he had hoped to compose. He besides lost a good portion of his luck in the prostration of two Indian Bankss. Forced to see a profession to back up himself, he turned foremost to art, which he studied in Paris, but did non prosecute it except in ulterior old ages as the illustrator of some of his ain novels and other Hagiographas.
Thackeray ‘s old ages of semi-idleness ended after he met and, on 20 August 1836, married Isabella Gethin Shawe ( 1816-1893 ) , 2nd girl of Matthew Shawe, a colonel, who had died after extraordinary service, chiefly in India, and his married woman, Isabella Creagh. The matrimony appears to hold been a really happy one though beset by jobs ( an overbearing mother-in-law and illness ) . Their three girls were Anne Isabella ( 1837-1919 ) , Jane ( 1837 ; died at 8 months ) and Harriet Marian ( 1840-1875 ) . He now began “ composing for his life, ” as he put it, turning to news media in an attempt to back up his immature household.
He chiefly worked for Fraser ‘s Magazine, a sharp-witted and sharp-tongued conservative publication, for which he produced art unfavorable judgment, short fictional studies, and two longer fictional plants, Catherine and The Luck of Barry Lyndon. Later, through his connexion to the illustrator John Leech, he began composing for the freshly created Punch magazine, where he published The Snob Papers, subsequently collected as The Book of Snobs. This work popularized the modern significance of the word “ prig ” .
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Tragedy struck in his personal life as his married woman succumbed to depression after the birth of their 3rd kid in 1840. Finding he could acquire no work done at place, he spent more and more clip off, until September of that twelvemonth, when he noticed how sedate her status was. Struck by guilt, he took his ailing married woman to Ireland. During the traversing she threw herself from a water-closet into the sea, from which she was rescued. They fled back place after a four-week domestic conflict with her female parent. From November 1840 to February 1842 she was in and out of professional attention, her status waxing and waning.
In the long tally she deteriorated into a lasting province of withdrawal from world, unaware of the universe around her. Thackeray urgently sought remedies for her, but nil worked, and she ended up confined in a place near Paris. She remained at that place until 1893, outlasting her hubby by 30 old ages. After his married woman ‘s unwellness, Thackeray became a de facto widower, ne’er set uping another lasting relationship. He did prosecute other adult females, in peculiar Mrs. Jane Brookfield and Sally Baxter. In 1851 Mr. Brookfield barred Thackeray from farther visits to or correspondence with Jane. Baxter, an American 20 old ages his junior whom he met during a lecture circuit in New York City in 1852, married another adult male in 1855.
In the early 1840s, Thackeray had some success with two travel books, The Paris Sketch Book and The Irish Sketch Book. Later in the decennary, he achieved some ill fame with his Snob Papers, but the work that truly established his celebrity was the fresh Vanity Fair, which foremost appeared in serialized installments get downing in January 1847. Even before Vanity Fair completed its consecutive tally, Thackeray had become a famous person, sought after by the really lords and ladies he satirized ; they hailed him as the equal of Dickens.
He remained “ at the top of the tree ” , as he put it, for the staying decennary and a half of his life, bring forthing several big novels, notably Pendennis, The Newcomes, and The History of Henry Esmond, despite assorted unwellnesss, including a close fatal 1 that struck him in 1849 in the center of composing Pendennis. He twice visited the United States on talk Tourss during this period.
Thackeray besides gave talks in London on the English humorists of the 18th century, and on the first four Hanoverian sovereign. The latter series was published in book signifier as The Four Georges. In Oxford, he stood unsuccessfully as an independent for Parliament. He was narrowly beaten by Cardwell ( 1070 ballots, against 1005 for Thackeray ) .
In 1860, Thackeray became editor of the freshly established Cornhill Magazine, but was ne’er comfy as an editor, preferring to lend to the magazine as a editorialist, bring forthing his Traffic circle Documents for it.
His wellness worsened during the 1850s and he was plagued by the repeating stenosis of the urethra that laid him up for yearss at a clip. He besides felt he had lost much of his originative drift. He worsened affairs by over-eating and imbibing and avoiding exercising, though he enjoyed horseback equitation and kept a Equus caballus. On 23 December 1863, after returning from dining out and before dressing for bed, Thackeray suffered a shot and was found dead on his bed in the forenoon. His decease at the age of fifty-three was wholly unexpected, and shocked his household, friends, and reading public. An estimated 7000 people attended his funeral at Kensington Gardens. He was buried on 29 December at Kensal Green Cemetery, and a memorial flop sculpted by Marochetti can be found in Westminster Abbey.
