William Makepeace Thackeray, author of Vanity Fair

Satire and the realist movement go hand-in-hand, considering Charles Dickens did it so well across multiple novels. Meanwhile, William Makepeace Thackeray was also behind the curtain, churning out masterpieces of realism and satire. Yet, through all of his writing, he is primarily known for one piece of fiction: Vanity Fair. In this post, we will explore his life and times.

Thackeray’s Early Life and Education

Thackeray was born in Calcutta in 1811. After the death of his father, who succumbed to fever in 1815, he moved back to England for education. His mother joined the young Thackeray five years later after she remarried. There, Thackeray attended private schools and Charterhouse. These experiences had a lasting, negative effect on him due to the sterile and abusive environment. A life in academia was not in his future; though he later attended Cambridge, he dropped out of the college partway through.

Meanwhile, his extensive travels and knowledge of British society abroad had a profound impact on his opinions of Britain and its culture. As many biographers have pointed out, while Thackeray did not intimately know Calcutta, the setting of India appeared in many of his novels. Using his characteristic wit, he delivered a scathing critique of British society and its hypocrisy (Watt).

Thackeray’s Writings and Later Years

Thackeray spent some time writing as a freelance journalist and submitted to Punch and The Times, among other publications. He also wrote travel books, including The Paris Sketch Book (1840) and From Cornhill to Grand Cairo (1844). Though these books were unsigned or under a pseudonym, Thackeray spent much of his writing life refining his skills as a realist author, focusing on realistic portrayals of life.

As previously mentioned, he is well-known for one novel in particular: Vanity Fair. It was serialized from 1847-1848. The novel satirized British society through the lens of the immoral Becky Sharp and the milquetoast Amelia Sedley. In the novel, both women attempt to ascend the social ladder, but are met with “human frailties” and a candid examination of “the human condition.”

Thackeray’s ability as a realist author shines through here. Some sources have argued that his literary skill aligned with his talent for crafting realistic characters.

“The power of Thackeray’s portrayal of cynical reason is that within the tradition of the English novel, with its vaguely reformist hopes, expressions of balked agency are rare enough to be as explosive as revolutions,” writes one companion guide. “It is important that the most self-aware characters in his major novels, the characters most capable of seeing their place in the system and articulating their helplessness within it, their coerced participation, are women. Never the valorized women … but the misfit women …”

Later in his life, William Makepeace Thackeray spent his time writing poetry. He passed away on Dec. 24, 1863.

Works Cited

“Vanity Fair.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., www.britannica.com/topic/Vanity-Fair-novel. Accessed 14 Feb. 2025.

Watt, Ian, editor. The Cambridge Companion to English Novelists. Cambridge University Press, 2009.