The Book of Snobs

Book Description

William Makepeace Thackeray was born in 1811 in Calcutta of Anglo-Indian parents. He was educated at English private schools and Cambridge but left without a degree. European travel was cut short by the loss of most of Thackeray's inheritance in 1833 in Indian bank failures, upon which he decided to make his living as a painter. Returning to London in 1837, he found himself with two young daughters and an insane wife by 1840 and forced to write for a living. Most of his early output was reviews, sketches, comic items or short serials for magazines, often under pseudonyms. His first novel, Barry Lyndon, was serialised in 1844, and Thackeray also published three travel books in the 1840s. His satiric vein and discontent with contemporary fictional norms led to his first major novel, Vanity F...