THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE

born July 18, 1811, Calcutta, India died Dec. 24, 1863, London, Eng. English novelist whose reputation rests chiefly on Vanity Fair (184748), a novel of the Napoleonic period in England, and The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. (1852), set in the early 18th century. Additional reading Gordon N. Ray, Thackeray, 2 vol. (195558, reissued 1972), is definitive and indispensable. Robert A. Colby, Thackeray's Canvass of Humanity: An Author and His Public (1979), is a literary history. Ann Monsarrat, An Uneasy Victorian: Thackeray the Man (1980), is the best one-volume biography. Dudley Flamm, Thackeray's Critics (1967), is an annotated bibliography of 19th-century British and American criticism, some of the most important items of which are reproduced in Thackeray: The Critical Heritage, ed. by Geoffrey Tillotson and Donald Hawes (1968). An interesting critical estimate by a friend and fellow novelist is provided by Anthony Trollope, Thackeray (1879, reprinted 1968). A variety of 20th-century opinions is assembled in Thackeray: A Collection of Critical Essays, comp. by Alexander Welsh (1968). John Charles Olmsted, Thackeray and His Twentieth-Century Critics (1977), is an annotated bibliography of British and American criticism, 190075; it is supplemented by Sheldon Goldfarb, William Makepeace Thackeray (1989), annotating more than 500 entries of criticism, 197587. Geoffrey Tillotson, Thackeray the Novelist (1954, reprinted 1974), is a subtle, persuasive exploration of his art. Jack P. Rawlins, Thackeray's Novels: A Fiction That Is True (1974), is a formal approach to Thackeray's major works. John Carey, Thackeray: Prodigal Genius (1977), includes a biographical summary.