Sunshine at home.
William Makepeace Thackeray, a British writer, was an only child and was born in Calcutta, India on July 18, 1811. His father was British and worked for the East India Company, and his mother was much younger than his father.
His representative work is the world famous book "Vanity Fair". As famous as Dickens, he is a representative novelist of the Victorian era. He is also the author of "Bandinis" and other works.
Life of the character
Study
After his father died in 1817, he was sent back to England to continue attending the private primary school he hated, and then transferred to Charterhouse He went to a public school in Sri Lanka, where he was often bullied and whipped, making his situation even more miserable. Six years later, in 1829, Thackeray left that public school and entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he stayed for only a little more than a year. For Thackeray, his days at university were happier than those at Charterhouse, but in both places he excelled socially but was mediocre academically.
While at Cambridge, Thackeray wrote for the undergraduate journal The Snob. He published a parody on Tennyson's award-winning poem "Timbuktu" and also collaborated with Tennyson. He also established lasting friendships with Edward Fitzgerald, the translator of the Rubaiyat, and William Brookfield. He participated in student union debates and spent extravagantly, leaving university without a degree.
New to society
His father left a large amount of property to Thackeray, so he had the financial ability to travel around and be active in the social activities he was passionate about. The year after leaving Cambridge, he went to Weimar, Germany, to study art, where he spent several months and was introduced to Goethe. After returning to London, he began to study law again. After a year of intermittent study, he felt that he was no longer interested in law and gave up this career. In 1833, he lost a fortune buying and running a short-lived newspaper, the National Standard. Thackeray invested blindly and spent extravagantly in life. By 1834, he had squandered all the inheritance left to him by his father, so he had to start running for his own livelihood. He had always had some talent in painting, so he decided to study painting in Paris. However, as before, he was not particularly successful, but he mastered the basic skills of cartoon drawing and was able to illustrate his own works in the future. After the publication of "The Pickwick Papers" in 1836, he applied to illustrate Dickens's works, but was unsuccessful. Under the temptation of an income of 8 guineas a week, he joined the "Constitution" newspaper as a correspondent in Paris. This was a radical newspaper of which Thackeray's stepfather was the president.
Thackeray
Marriage and Family
In August 1836, Thackeray married an Irish girl named Elizabeth Sean. They gave birth to three daughters in one marriage, only two of whom survived. The eldest daughter was named Anne, Mrs. Rich, who later became a novelist and essayist. After the birth of her third daughter, Mrs. Thackeray's symptoms of mental disorder increased day by day. By 1842, she suffered a complete nervous breakdown and had to be isolated. She lived 30 years longer than Thackeray, but her spirit never returned to normal. Due to the tragedy of his marriage, Thackeray had to take on the responsibility of raising his daughter alone. While his wife was alive, he had no conditions to remarry, so his family life was undoubtedly lonely and miserable.
Rise to fame
A few months after Thackeray's marriage, the Constitution went bankrupt, and he had to write for other periodicals, including The Times, as a hired writer. In the newly founded "Fraser's Magazine" he published his first famous work "The Attempted Journalist" (1837-1838). In this work, Thackeray invented a pushy and self-righteous footman whose pretentiousness was ridiculous. He often expressed this theme in his later works. Thakore's reviews, short stories, novels, etc. were successively published in "Fraser's Magazine". Among them, "Catherine" written in 1839-1840 was the most eye-catching, which satirized crimes similar to "Newgate's Calendar" novel. The main content of "The Huojiati Diamond" in 1841 is corruption and speculation in the business. "Barry Lyndon" in 1844 is an autobiography about an Irish legendary figure in the 18th century. The story begins when the protagonist is a young rogue and ends with his death in prison. From 1842, Thackeray began to contribute articles to the new magazine "Rebounce", and also wrote articles to "Snob". In 1848, he collected the works published in the magazine "Snob" into a volume and named it "The Collection of Power". The publication of the book earned Thackeray the title of social satirist, and he became famous ever since.
While working at "The Snob", Thackeray began to create the novel "Vanity Fair" (1847-1848). This was his first novel and was published in a monthly series. published. The story is set in Britain during and after the Napoleonic Wars, but the macro insights about power and ignorance are deeply universal. The whole book centers on the adventures of the governess Rebecca Sharp in Vanity Fair. She is bold and fierce, and does not hesitate to seek fame and wealth at all costs. She is one of the most vivid literary images in British novels.
Following Vanity Fair, Thackeray serialized "The History of Pendennis" from 1848 to 1850. The book tells the experiences of a lovely and generous young man, and it is obvious that many of them describe the author's own life. portrayal.
Lectures everywhere
Thackeray loved socializing and longed for the comfortable life of the upper class. On the one hand, he maintains a good relationship with the upper class figures; on the other hand, these figures are often the objects of satire in his works. Since his wife's mental illness cannot be cured, Thackeray cannot communicate with her. Only communicating with friends can relieve his depression. In the years following his wife's insanity, it was one of his close friends at Cambridge, William Brookfield, who provided him with comfort during a time of great sorrow. But as time went by, Thackeray truly fell in love with Mrs. Brookfield. In the fall of 1851, Brookfield wisely told his wife to spend less time with Thackeray. This friendship was Thackeray's spiritual support. Due to the severance of the relationship, he himself suffered the biggest emotional blow in his life.
In order to forget this sad history and to give his daughters greater financial security, Thackeray began to give lectures everywhere. Although he encountered many embarrassing situations when lecturing in public, his six lectures on "English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century" were a great success. Encouraged by this, he decided to give lectures in the United States. Because he had carefully studied humorists, he had better conditions. Before coming to the United States, he published the historical novel Henry Esmond. The work is set against the backdrop of one of his favorite historical periods, the reign of Queen Anne. Part of the love story between Esmond and Kesterwood told in the book is his own love for Lady Brookfield. emotional portrayal. This work is perhaps the only one of Thackeray's novels that was not written in serial form, so it is more successful than any other in its ending and organizational structure. In 1852-1853, in addition to earning 2,500 pounds, Thackeray also spent a good time in the United States.
Saccore's most popular work, the fairy tale "The Rose and the Ring" was officially published in 1855, and "The Newcomers" also began to be serialized at the same time. "The Newcomers" is also a portrayal of Thackeray's own young life. The male protagonist Kediff is a talented and intelligent young man who has always dreamed of becoming an artist. However, he has suffered setbacks in life due to his own limitations. The hero's first marriage is also a reminiscence of Thackeray's early unhappy marriage. However, the most compelling characters in the book are Cediff's elusive yet charming lover Ethel, and the respectable yet innocent old Colonel Newcomb.
In 1855, Thackeray went to the United States again, this time to give academic lectures on his own published work "The Four Georges". After returning home, he participated in the parliamentary election held in Oxford in July 1857 as a candidate of the Liberal Party, but was unsuccessful. Ten years later, he participated in the drafting of the "Reform Bill" and advocated expanding the right to vote.
Dominating the literary world
At this time, he had begun to be as famous as Dickens. Their relationship, while not exactly close, has always been friendly. But they had a quarrel, and this only quarrel was not settled until Thackeray's death. Like Dickens, he had a deep sympathy for the suffering of the people. The emotionally fragile "good women" in his works would sometimes be cynical and even cynical about society. This was not easy for people to accept at the time, but it was easy to understand. Modern people love it. Thackeray was particularly good at writing comic works, and his talent for this aspect is best illustrated in Mr. Clumsy's Prize-winning Novelist, a series of works that mocked his contemporaries, which was published again in 1856. Reprinted in "Famous Novels". Thackeray did not consider himself a poet, but several of his cheerful verses, such as "The Ballad of French Fish Stew", are considered classics of his work.
Another great work by Thackeray is "The Virginians" (1857-1859), which continues to tell the fate of the two twin grandsons of the Englishman Henry Esmond. The novel unfolds through two main lines. One is set in Britain, where the pace of life was accelerating and the pursuit of fashion was at that time, and the other is set in the United States, where the war of domestic unification was ongoing.
Lured by the generous salary, he began to serve as the first editor-in-chief of the "Cornhill Magazine" in 1860. Although he was not very suitable for that job, he was still able to do it well. His editorial style and standards were consistent with the spirit of the times in which he lived. He once refused to publish a poem written by Ms. Browning for the magazine because it contained "an illicit emotional narrative between a man and a woman." Due to Thackeray's own reputation and the extremely high remuneration paid by "Cornhill Magazine", many famous writers have submitted articles to the magazine. The famous ones include Matthew Arnold, Tennyson, Trollope and Login. Sri Lanka and Thackeray's daughter Anne, etc.
Thackeray's last three novels were also published in the Cornhill Magazine, namely "Lovell the Widower" in 1860, "The Adventures of Philip" in 1861-1862, and "The Adventures of Philip" in 1864. "Denis Duvall". "Widower Lovell" is a short novel adapted from an earlier, unsuccessful two-act play. "The Adventures of Philip" has 10 episodes in one episode, the last episode of which was adapted by the author based on his own early life.
"Denis Duvall" was not completely completed. The work tells a historical romance from the 18th century that he particularly loved. Published in "Cornhill Magazine" are also his best works in his later years, the interesting chat series and the more familiar essay collection "Oblique Essays". Like other wonderful works, these are the author's memories and autobiography.
In the last ten years of his life, Thackeray was not in good health. In December 1863, he died suddenly in Kensington, London.
Introduction to the work
Main novels
Some of Thackeray's early novels depict various liars and adventurers in the upper class, and some satirize the popular renderings of the time. Novel about criminal behavior, the main ones are "Correspondence" (1838), "Catherine" (1840), "The Hogarty Diamond" (1841) and "The Experience of Barry Lyndon" (1844) .
His masterpiece "Vanity Fair" began to be serialized in "Clumsy" magazine in 1847, with the subtitle "Novel without Heroes". It does not feature an outstanding hero, and there are very few positive characters. Thackeray advocated that novels should depict reality, but some popular novels at that time were very untrue. Therefore he wrote "Novel of Famous Writers" (1847), which imitated and made fun of several popular novels.
The creative method of "Vanity Fair" strives to be true, and in many places it breaks through the conventions of writing novels at that time. The characters in Thackeray's works are not simplistic, good or bad, but have profound inner activities. At the same time, he also attaches great importance to the relationship between environment and character. He often uses vivid and typical details to depict the main characters' personalities from different social environments and different historical stages. Becky is a typical female adventurer in the British capitalist society in the early 19th century. The structure of this novel is grand enough to accommodate a vast social panorama, but it fails to be loose. The author adopts a narrative method of storytelling, which is friendly and casual, humorous or sad, mixed with narrative, discussion, and cynicism, forming a unique style.
"Pendennis" (1848-1850) was written in imitation of H. Fielding's "Tom Jones", and the protagonist's early experiences are influenced by the author.
"Henry Esmond" (1852) is a historical novel set against the background of Britain's foreign wars and the Royalist restoration activities in the early 18th century. Thackeray broke away from the romantic tradition of W. Scott's historical novels and adopted a realistic creative method. He deliberately imitated the style of the 18th century and made faithful depictions of some historical figures.
"The Newcombs" (1853-1855) exposes the ugliness of middle-class life, and at the same time creates two positive characters, Colonel Newcomb and Miss Ethel.
"The Virginian" (1857-1859) is the sequel to "Henry Esmond" and writes about the fate of Esmond's descendants in the New World.
Thackeray's last novel was "Denis Duval", which had only eight chapters completed at the time of his death and was published in the "Cornhill Magazine" in 1864.
Other works
Thackeray's collection of essays is most famous for "The Face of a Snob" (1848), which consists of 45 close-ups of snobs from all walks of life in British society. portrait. "Meandering Essays" (1863) collects a series of interesting essays he wrote for Cornhill magazine.
Thackeray's speech was later collected in two collections: "English Humorists" (1853) and "The Four King Chauchat" (1860).
His poetry collections include "Songs" (1849).