THACKERAY, William Makepeace

There are thousands of thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen and writes.

William Makepeace Thackery was a british novelist known best for his works of satire. He was born an only child in Calcutta, British India in 1811, and didn’t come to England until the death of his father. He was educated in Charterhouse School but disliked it so much he parodied the school as Slaughterhouse in his fiction. After a delay due to illness he attended Trinity College, Cambridge in 1829 but left in 1830. His inheritance was squandered on gambling and funding unsuccessful newspapers so he needed to find a profession to support himself and his family so he began to “write for his life”. 

In the early 1840s he had some success with two travel books leading to his securing the role of Irish Expert in Punch under the pseudonym Hibernis Hibernior. Snob Papers (published 1848) gained him more recognition but the work that secured his fame was Vanity Fair causing Thackeray to be admired by the very lords and ladies he had satirised. He enjoyed success for the rest of his life.