William Makepeace Thackeray

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) was an English novelist, satirist, and illustrator. Born in India, Thackeray was sent to England by his mother at the age of four following the death of his father, a secretary for the East India Compny. Educated at the Charterhouse School, a boarding school in Godalming, Surrey, Thackeray went on to study at Trinity College, Cambridge before abandoning academia in 1830. He spent the next few years traveling throughout Europe, visiting Paris and meeting the elderly Goethe in Weimar. In 1836, after squandering much of his inheritance on gambling and ill-advised investments, Thackeray at last settled down, marrying Isabella Gethin Shawe and embarking on a career as a professional writer. During this period, he contributed regularly to Fraser's Magazine, The Times, The Morning Chronicle, and Punch, while also publishing Catherine (1840) and The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844), his first full length works of fiction. Despite his newfound success, however, these years were tragically marred by the decline of Thackeray's wife, who suffered from a debilitative case of postpartum depression that led to her institutionalization. Between 1845 and 1851, under the pseudonym Hibernis Hibernior, Thackeray produced illustrations in Punch that are now recognized as hostile to the Irish people and exploitative of their suffering during the Great Irish Famine. In 1848, Thackeray published Vanity Fair, a satirical novel examining the lives of England's elite during and after the Napoleonic Wars.