William Makepeace Thackeray

She worked a number of jobs that included teaching (she was a governess who attended her pupils by the day and did not live in), jewelry-making, and needlework. In the 1840s she was making about...

W. M. Thackeray regularly addessed his daughter in correspondence to her and others by the apparently derogatory endearment Fat. She was known throughout her life to friends and family as Anny.

EG devoted considerable time to a new novel in 1851, but put it aside in December to work on Cranford. She took up Ruth again in April 1852. A sense of her...

Although she continued to write letters and journals, and produced one fairy tale, she did not attempt to write professionally until encouraged by her father to do so in 1860. That the young Anne Thackeray

The disparity in age between husband and wife in this novel, unlike that in Nancy, suggests only insurmountable difference. Belinda Churchill, resident in an ancient university town which Broughton calls Oxbridge, marries the...

The controversial quality of this book made it popular in the USA as well as in England, and several new editions followed. Thackeray , however, wrote: We never met with a book more pernicious or...

Thackeray (associating Morgan in his comments with Frances Trollope ) said the cultural judgements in this book were based on nothing but tea-table gossip.

The Monthly Review found the heroine of this book more interesting than Betsy Thoughtless (with better character-drawing but a continued deficiency in plot and sentiments. It conceded that the whole was doubtless much superior to...

HMC was one of the handful of women cited by Johnson (as Miss Mulso) as an authority in his Dictionary of the English Language, 1755 (all of them among the fifty or so...

Admirers of Lady Audley included Thackeray , according to his daughter Anne .Arnold Bennett gave it very high praise. Of the passage in which Lucy Audley decides to try to murder Robert, he...

EE herself remarked that the novel had had more success than I require, and considerably more than I expected.Walter Bagehot , reviewing it for the Saturday Review, emphasized its message of social...

Among five favourable reviews later quoted, the Daily Telegraph offered an apparently enthusiastic plot-summary. The Liverpool Daily Post likened the work to Thackeray 's Henry Esmond, 1852.

Two things about this novel gave offence initially and had a long-term effect on its reputation: its treating the nasty topic of deformity, and its involving the hero emotionally with three women (his mother as...

John Blackwood was in general delighted with the manuscript of Amos Barton. Thackeray , too, read it and was impressed. Blackwood 's few criticisms (particularly of the ending, which he found comparatively feeble) appalled...

Lady Charlotte Guest , who was first married ten years before this book appeared, received a copy of it as a gift from her husband and read it at his behest. It was after...