Thackeray - Softcover

Taylor, D J

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099563258 ISBN 13: 9780099563259

Publisher: Vintage, 2011

Synopsis

Vanity Fair, published in serial parts in 1847-8, made William Makepeace Thackeray famous 'all but at the top of the tree', he told his mother, 'and having a great fight up there with Dickens'. Behind him lay an extraordinary life - an intense, Anglo-Indian childhood, a fortune lost by his early twenties, a disastrous marriage to a wife who went mad and left him to bring up two small daughters in near penury.

But his later life was no less troubled. As D.J. Taylor shows in this incisive biography, Thackeray was a complex, touchy man, acutely sensitive to criticism and fearful of the publicity that accompanied his passage through life.

About this title

Review:

It could be argued that the best biographies are written by novelists: Ackroyd's Dickens would be the classic example. Taylor is a deft if underrated novelist (his Trespass is particularly absorbing), who has also written a number of good critical studies of the contemporary novel. Tackling a topic as major as Thackeray is a bold move and one that takes him out of his usual arena. But he pulls it off with spectacular aplomb; it is hard to see how this could have been done better.

Everything about this book is just right: from the Thackerayan illustrated initial letters that decorate each chapter opening, to the fluid intelligent tone, and the broad grasp of subject. Taylor points out that, from a biographer's point of view, Thackeray presents an "elusive, or even protean" character; a function of the vigorous compartmentalisation that he undertook in his life.

However, Taylor provides a convincing a sense of him. His wife confined to an insane asylum, he fell in love with Jane Brookfield, the wife of a friend; a passion which lasted throughout his life, which cost him his friendship and which brought him a great deal of melancholy as well as joy. Taylor is particularly touching in the latter part of his biography, sketching in this unfulfilled love affair.

His accounts of the novels are good too; and he pauses at moments in the chronological flow to ponder questions such as "Why Thackeray Matters?" The greatest praise of this fine biography is that you come away in no doubt that Thackeray matters a great deal. --Adam Roberts

Review:

"An accomplished, responsible, imaginative reconstruction of life, and of a life. Thackeray has come home" (Victoria Glendinning Spectator)

"Wonderful... An outstanding biography. It is unlikely there will be a better one for years to come" (Kathryn Hughes Mail on Sunday)

"A compelling biography... Taylor succeeds always in evoking a rich sense of context...without losing the narrative momentum" (Michael Slater New Statesman) --New Statesman

"A richly detailed book... Taylor writes with verve and affection and is shrewdly perceptive" (John Carey Sunday Times) --Sunday Times

"Outstanding... On every page there is evidence of a formidable critical and imaginative intelligence at work... A splendid book" (Frank McLynn Evening Standard) --Evening Standard

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0099563258
• ISBN 13: 9780099563259
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 528