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This edition of one of the greatest social satires of the English language reproduces the text of the Oxford Thackeray and includes all of Thackeray's own illustrations.
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Set in 19th-century London, Thackeray's The History of Pendennis: His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy (1848-50) presents a partially fictionalised autobiography of the title character. Country-born gentleman Arthur Pendennis travels to London in quest of town life and society. The novel portrays his love affairs with the callous Blanche Amory and poor Fanny. Both of them marry other people, and Pendennis finally weds Laura Bell, his adopted sister, who had always loved him.
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Published in 1859, The Virginians by William Makepeace Thackeray is an extension of his earlier novel Henry Esmond. Set partly in England and partly in colonial Virginia, the work follows the lives of Esmond's grandsons, Henry and George Warringtons. The breach between them is followed as the brothers take opposite sides in the American Civil War. A subtle commentary on the Civil War and the breach between the two sides is also presented.
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William Makepeace Thackeray's novel The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. (1852) presents the story of Henry Esmond, one of the colonels in Queen Anne's service. A sense of insecurity follows him as the illegitimate son of a Jacobite family even after his eventual acceptance by his family members. His participation in Battle of the Boyne and the Battle of Blenheim and his subsequent acceptance of a Protestant England are portrayed.
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The Newcomes is Thackeray's most essentially 'Victorian' novel, generous in its proportions, sharp in its criticism of the moral convolutions of the age, and encyclopaedic in its reference. Set in the 1830s and 1840s, a period of rapid change and of political and economic development, the novel considers the fortunes and misfortunes of a 'most respectable' extended middle-class family. The action moves from London to Brighton, from England to France, from the political ambitions of an older generation in the industrial North to the painterly pretensions of a younger generation in Italy. At its centre is Thomas Newcome, a retired Colonel in the Indian Army who finds the snobberies and hypocrisies of early Victorian England disconcerting. In a world of men on the make, of social mobility, and of the buying and selling of women in an aristocratic marriage market, it is the Colonel's distinctive but old-fashioned gentlemanliness that stands out from a self-seeking society. The most observant and witty among Thackeray's studies of his culture, The Newcomes is also among his most complex and allusive novels, and this edition provides particularly detailed notes which clarify his many references.