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the experience of reading in Britain, from 1450 to 1945...

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Listings for Author:  

Thackeray

 

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William Makepeace Thackeray : 

'Our parents had accumulated a large number of books, which we were allowed to browse in as much as we liked.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Vivian (Molly) Hughes      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Vanity Fair

'Our parents had accumulated a large number of books, which we were allowed to browse in as much as we liked.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Vivian (Molly) Hughes      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Vanity Fair

1"Vanity Fair" I read without the faintest suspicion of the intent of the note in the bouquet, or of Rawdon's reason for knocking down Lord Steyne.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Vivian (Molly) Hughes      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Vanity Fair

'When asked how books had shaped him, Labour M.P. F.W. Jowett ranged widely: Ivanhoe made him want to read, Unto this Last made him a socialist, Past and Present made him think, Vanity Fair and Les Miserables taught him human sympathy, and Wuthering Heights taught him respect for man and nature.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: F.W. Jowett      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : 

'In a Sunday school library set up by a cotton mill fire-beater, [Thomas Thompson] read Dickens, Thackeray, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Marcus Aurelius'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Thompson      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Barry Lyndon

'"I made no distinction between Thackeray's Barry Lyndon and Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel - or between Pilgrim's Progress and Sexton Blake", recalled upholsterer's son Herbert Hodge. "All four were simply exciting stories".'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Herbert Hodge      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : 

'As a boy V.S. Pritchett read Oliver Twist "in a state of hot horror, It seized me because it was about London and the fears of the London streets. There were big boys at school who could grow up to be the Artful Dodger; many of us could have been Oliver...". Pritchett read Thackeray for escape, "a taste of the gentler life of better-off people", but in Dickens "I saw myself and my life in London".'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Sawdon Pritchett      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Vanity Fair

[due to the fact that books in working class communities were generally cheap out of copyright reprints, not new works] Welsh collier Joseph Keating was able to immerse himself in Swift, Pope, Fielding, Richardson, Smollett, Sheridan, Goldsmith, Keats, Byron, Shelley, Dickens and Greek philosophy, as well as the John Dicks edition of Vanity Fair in weekly installments. The common denominator among these authors was that they were all dead. "Volumes by living authors were too high-priced for me", Keating explained. "Our schoolbooks never mentioned living writers; and the impression in my mind was that an author, to be a living author, must be dead and that his work was all the better if he died of neglect and starvation".'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Keating      Print: Serial / periodical

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : 

'[Philip Ballard] had no exposure to contemporary writers until the 1890s: "I gained a nodding acquaintance with the life and letters of Ancient Greece and Rome, and... I had read most of Dickens, much of Thackeray and some of Scott; but I had never read a line of Henry James, of Meredith or of Hardy".'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Ballard      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : 

'"Thinking back, I am amazed at the amount of English literature we absorbed in those four years", recalled Ethel Clark, a Gloucester railway worker's daughter, "and I pay tribute to the man who made it possible... Scott, Thackeray, Shakespeare, Longfellow, Dickens, Matthew Arnold, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Rudyard Kipling were but a few authors we had at our fingertips. How he made the people live again for us!".'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Ethel Clark      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : [unknown]

'The son of a barely literate Derbyshire collier recalled a sister, a worker in a hosiery factory, who was steeped in the poetry of Byron, Shelley, Keats and D.H. Lawrence. Their mother's reading "would astonish the modern candidate for honours in English at any university", he claimed. "Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgeniev, Dumas, Hugo, Thackeray, Meredith, Scott, Dickens, all the classics, poetry etc., all these gave her immense joy".'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group:      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : The Four Georges

'[Max] Beerbohm ... [declared] to Will Rothenstein that he had read ... only Thackeray's The Four Georges (1860) and Lear's Book of Nonsense (1846), though lately he had sampled Wilde's Intentions (1891).'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Max Beerbohm      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : unknown

Geraldine Hodgson, The Life of James Elroy Flecker (1925), 'Reading aloud in the family circle was an established custom [in 1880s-90s] ... by a very early age, Roy had listened to large parts of Dickens, Longfellow, and Tennyson, and to much of Thackeray, George Eliot, Carlyle, and Browning.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: James Elroy Flecker      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : unknown

Philip Gibbs in The Pageant of the Years (1946), on work as writer of series of articles under name "Self-Help" in early 1900s: "'All the reading I had done as a boy, all my youthful enthusiasm for Shakespeare, Milton, Scott, Thackeray, Dickens, George Eliot, and Hardy ... was a great source of supply now when I sat down to write aout great books ..."

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Gibbs      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : novels

June Badeni on readings by 13-year-old Alice Thompson, as recorded in her notebook: 'She has been reading more of Scott and Dickens, is plunging through the novels of George Eliot... has sampled Bulwer Lytton, Thackeray, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Alice Thompson      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Vanity Fair

[analysis of a female respondent in Arnold Freeman's 1918 Sheffield Survey] 'Machinist in a shell factory, age twenty-four... Has read Shakespeare, Burns, Keats, Scott, Tennyson, Dickens, Vanity Fair, The Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, biography and history'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : [unknown]

'Theodore Watts-Dunton remembers Algernon Swinburne's fondness for reading aloud during his last years at Watts-Dunton's home: "... he would read for the hour together from Dickens, Lamb, Charles Reade and Thackeray."'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Algernon Swinburne      Print: Unknown

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : [unknown]

'On learning that [Hall] Caine was to present twenty-four lectures in Liverpool on "Prose Fiction" ... [D. G. Rossetti] insisted that he read the works [of English novelists] aloud to him; hence "I read Fielding and Smollett, Richardson, Radcliffe, 'Monk' Lewis, Thackeray and Dickens, under a running fire of comment and criticism from Rossetti".'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Hall Caine      Print: Book

  

William Thackeray : 

?Of course, it is true that English writers ? Thackeray conspicuously so ? are injured by being cramped as to love in its various manifestations? Consequently within given limits & the limits are certainly too narrow, I consider the lovemaking of English novelists to be purer & more life-like. This touches certain theories or, if you like, crochets of mine, on wh. I could be voluminous.?

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : 

'As a collier [Joseph Keating]... heard a co-worker sigh, "Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate". Keating was stunned: "You are quoting Pope". "Ayh", replied his companion, "me and Pope do agree very well". Keating had himself been reading Pope, Fielding, Smollett, Goldsmith and Richardson in poorly printed paperbacks. Later he was reassigned to a less demanding job at a riverside colliery pumping station, which allowed him time to tackle Swift, Sheridan, Byron, Keats, Shelley and Thackeray'.

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Keating      Print: Book

  

Wililam Makepeace Thackeray : 

Charlotte Bronte to William Smith Williams, 11 December 1847: 'Mr Thackeray is a keen, ruthless satirist -- I have never perused his writings but with blended feelings of admiration and indignation ...'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : The History of Henry Esmond (volume I)

Charlotte Bronte to George Smith, 14 February 1852, after having been lent the first volume of W. M. Thackeray, "Henry Esmond", in manuscript by her publishers: 'It has been a great delight to me to read Mr Thackeray's manuscript ... you must permit me ... to thank you for a pleasure so rare and special ... In the first half of the work what chiefly struck me was the wonderful manner in which the author throws himself into the spirit and letter of the times wherof he treats ... As usual -- he is unjust to women ...Many other things I noticed that -- for my part -- grieved and esxasperated me as I read -- but then again came passages so deeply thought -- so tenderly felt -- one could not help forgiving and admiring.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte      Manuscript: Unknown

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Lectures

Charlotte Bronte to George Smith, May 1853: 'The "Lectures" arrived safely; I have read them through twice. They must be studied to be appreciated ... I was present at the Fielding lecture ... That Thackeray was wrong in his way of treating Fielding's character and vices -- my conscience told me. After reading that lecture -- I trebly feel that he was wrong ...'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : The Virginians

'[In The Saturday Review, 19 November 1904], "A Mother" records the books consumed since July by her sixteen-year-old daughter ... [who is] on the point of going in for the "Senior Cambridge" ... : "Old Mortality", "The Farringdons", "By Mutual Consent" (L. T. Meade), "To Call Her Mine", "Kathrine Regina", and "Self or Bearer" (Besant); "Christmas Carol", "The Cricket on the Hearth", "Hypatia", "Concerning Isabel Carnaby", "The Virginians", "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "The Head of the House" (E. Everett-Green), "A Double Thread", "The Heir-Presumptive and the Heir-Apparent", "Sesame and Lilies", "A Tale of Two Cities".'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group:      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : 

'"[Penny dreadfuls] were thrilling, absolutely without sex interest, and of a high moral standard", explained London hatmaker Frederick Willis. "No boy would be any the worse for reading them and in many cases they encouraged and developed a love of reading that led him onwards and upwards on the fascinating path of literature. It was the beloved 'bloods' that first stimulated my love of reading, and from them I set out on the road to Shaw and Wells, Thackeray and Dickens, Fielding, Shakespeare and Chaucer".'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Willis      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Henry Esmond

'David Copperfield was puzzling, too. He was a 'posthumous child' and was born with a 'caul'. The French dictionary, the only one I had, gave posthumous; posthume, which did not help me much; but for caul it gave fillet, and of course a fillet was a string bag. How very odd. Then someone gave me a present of Esmond; but my mother said I was not to read it, because parts of it were 'not very nice'. Of course I wanted to find out what was not nice about it; so, by a quibble, I decided that I might read all that I could manage without cutting the pages. With industry and perseverance this meant practically all of it, though the pages were not cut for many a long year. But I could never discover what was wrong with it'.

Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Gwen Raverat      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Vanity Fair

[L.M. Montgomery] 'read a great deal; she mentions fifty different authors in her journal which covers the years 1910 to 1921. Titles range from Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" to Beatrix Potter's "Peter Rabbit" and Thackeray's "Vanity Fair". She also read many female writers, such as George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, Edith Wharton and Olive Schreiner'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Maud Montgomery      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : The Great Hoggarty Diamond

'Began to read Egmont after dinner, then "The Hoggarty Diamond".'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud]      Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

  

William Thackeray : Virginians

?We even formed a magazine club ? purchasing periodicals, reading them in turn, and then distributing them among the members. Thackeray?s "Virginians" and Dickens?s "Little Dorrit" were, I recollect, among the serials for which we subscribed.?

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: William Adams and colleagues at the office of the 'Illustrated Times'     Print: Serial / periodical

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : The Newcomes

'We are reading Gall's Anatomie et Physiologie du Cerveau in the evening, with, occasionally, Carpenter's Comparative Physiology. The Newcomes as light fare after dinner'.

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot and G.H. Lewes     Print: Book

  

Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie : Madame de Sevigne

November 18, 1881 [Paris] 'This morning I laid in a stock of Tauchnitzes, and am beginning a pleasant sketch of Miss Thackeray's on Mme. de Sevigne. Apropos of books, I received two days ago a letter from an American publisher, telling me that M. Lanier had thrown my Mabinogion into a popular form for children and had just completed the work before he died [?] This is very interesting to me. My first number came out in 1839, forty-three years ago.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : [unknown]

'on his eighth birthday, 27 February 1920, an ox-cart drew up outside Everleas Lodge with a present for him - a huge parcel of books. His father had bought him a complete set of Dickens which had belonged to a recently expired tea-planter. Durrell claimed later that he never got beyond the Pickwick Papers (sometimes he said that he got through about ten of them), but Dickens gave him a vision of merrie England... supplemented later by reading Thackeray and R.S. Surtees. In Surtees' convivial tales of the hunting, shooting, sporting Mr Jorrocks and his pursuitful adventures, there was something ruddy, jolly and rumbustious, which appealed to the perky youngster'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Heny Esmond

'O! "Esmond"! That book marks its own year in one's life. I never did any justice to Thackeray before; and I cannot now read "Vanity Fair". But the publisher sent me "Esmond"; and I expect to read it as long as I live. "Villette". I suppose you feel with the rest of us ; - that it is marvellously powerful, but grievously morbid and not a little coarse.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : The Irish Sketch-Book by M. A. Titmarsh

'My [Harriet Martineau's] first real interest in [Thackeray] arose from reading M. A. Titmarsh in Ireland, during my Tynemouth illness.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : The History of Henry Esmond Esq

'"Esmond" appears to me [Harriet Martineau] [italics]the [end italics] book of the century, in its department. I have read it three times; and each time with new wonder at its rich ripe wisdom, and at the singular charm of Esmond's own character.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : The History of Pendennis

'While at Cromer [...] I read "Pendennis" with such intense enjoyment [...] that the notion of trying my hand once more at a novel seized upon me'.

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : The History of Henry Esmond

'I will not tell you my exact state of health day by day, but will give you a diary of my reading, which is perhaps a good index of my physical state. Friday morning. Full of buck. "Tartarin sur les Alpes". Friday afternoon. Wanted soothing. "Letters from a Silent Study". Saturday morning. Very depressed. "Pickwick Papers". Saturday afternoon. A little better. "Esmond". Sunday morning. Quite well thank you! "Butler's Analogy". Sunday afternoon. Quite well thank you! "Esmond and Stonewall Jackson". As a guide I may point out that "Pickwick" cheers me up when I am most depressed, while "Butler's Analogy" taxes all my strength.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Donald William Alers Hankey      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : [unknown]

'It [central London] was truly a wonder world, for I seeing it not merely with my eyes of flesh but with the eyes of heightened imagination; -seeing it not only through spectacles manufactured by an optician, but through glasses supplied by magicians names Charles Dickens, Walter Scott, William Makepeace Thackeray, Joseph Addison, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Toby Smollett, Sam Johnson and Will Shakespeare himself. Had I scraped an acquaintance with all these before I was fifteen? I knew them well! -and that was the trouble. I was book hungry, and I found a land where books were accessible in a quantity and variety sufficient to satisfy even my uncontrolled voracity.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : [novels]

'Later on I found at the bottom of a cupboard some of volumes -Addison's "Spectator", Pope's "Homer", and a few other things. My grandmother -who also devoured books in great gulps -gave me a "Robinson Crusoe", and lent me volumes containing four "Waverley Novels" apiece. Much about the same time my father got bound up a set of Dickens's novels he had bought in weekly parts. They were in the popular quarto edition with drawings by Fred Barnard, John Mahony and others. These were a real treasure -and all the more so as my father was an ardent Dickens "fan" who rather despised Scott as a "romantic" and a "Tory". His mother (born in 1815, so old enough to have read the "Waverley Novels" when they were still comparatively new things) rather sniffed at Dickens, and definitely preferred both Scott and Thackeray. She gave me "Vanity Fair" as an antidote to "David Copperfield" and added a Shakespeare, and a bundle of "paperback" editions -Fielding, Smollett, Fennimore Cooper and Captain Marryatt.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group:      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Vanity Fair

'Later on I found at the bottom of a cupboard some of volumes -Addison's "Spectator", Pope's "Homer", and a few other things. My grandmother -who also devoured books in great gulps -gave me a "Robinson Crusoe", and lent me volumes containing four "Waverley Novels" apiece. Much about the same time my father got bound up a set of Dickens's novels he had bought in weekly parts. They were in the popular quarto edition with drawings by Fred Barnard, John Mahony and others. These were a real treasure -and all the more so as my father was an ardent Dickens "fan" who rather despised Scott as a "romantic" and a "Tory". His mother (born in 1815, so old enough to have read the "Waverley Novels" when they were still comparatively new things) rather sniffed at Dickens, and definitely preferred both Scott and Thackeray. She gave me "Vanity Fair" as an antidote to "David Copperfield" and added a Shakespeare, and a bundle of "paperback" editions -Fielding, Smollett, Fennimore Cooper and Captain Marryatt.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson      Print: Book

  

William Thackeray : The Newcomes. Memoirs of a most respectable family

'there has been so much motion that it has been next to impossible for a person to work. I have read lately the "Newcomes" by Thackeray "Stuart of Dunleath" by Mrs Norton & "Coningsby" by Disraeli'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe      Print: Book

  

William Thackeray : The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century

'I am reading the "English humourists" by Thackeray'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe      Print: Book

  

W.M. Thackeray : The History of Pendennis

'I enjoy most autobiographies and biography - you know Negley Farson's Travels - at the moment I'm reading Thackeray. I've never read "Pendennis" and I'm simply adoring it - I love detective stories too - I read the "Forsyte Saga" again - it's wonderful, isn't it...Do you know for the first year of the war I hardly read anything "Take Courage": there they were wanting a dictator and when they got him, well he wasn't the hero they thought - I do think Civil War is awful - then of course, I loved all those "Heavenly Trouser" ones.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group:      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Henry Esmond

'In various letters to Osborne he mentions having received "Tom Jones" which he did not care for; "Jane Eyre" he thought a "wonderful book"; in a volume titled "British Dramatists" he thought Webster's "The Duchess of Malfi" "the best by head and shoulders"; Carlyle's "Heroes and Hero Worship" he admired "exceedingly" (he proceeded to write an essay of twenty-six notepaper pages on Carlyle); of Thackeray's "Henry Esmond" he told Osborne that he thought it a "great book", though he disliked its "overelaboration": "perhaps you may say it is merely an additional grace - but I think it stands rather in the way of true eloquence and geninely forceful tragedy, not that I deny there is both eloquence and tragedy in 'Esmond', but I think there might have been more and grander but for that elaborateness".'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Symons      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Barry Lindon

'Monday, 15th February, Thackeray?s descriptions of high life, and, more especially of army conditions, are magnificent. I would like to give a paper on this aspect of Thackeray?s writing, or, indeed, on this book. Wrote to Eric Barber re Scarborough Camp. Read - ?Barry Lindon? (W. M. Thackeray)'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : The Four Georges

'Sunday, 28th February, Discussion Group ? We read four plays from which we intend to choose our programme for the summer and next year: ? Thread o? Scarlet? (J. J. Bell) ? A night in the sun? (Dunsany) ? The Monkey?s Paw? (W. W. Jacobs) ?The rising of the moon? ( Lady Gregory) Read ? ?The Four Georges? (W. Thackeray)'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century

'Tuesday, 13th April, Madge intending to call, decided to go to the Settlement to see Algy and his players. The rehearsal fell through however owing to the Settlement being crowded. Postponed to Friday. I walked down to the Ferry with Bal Lear, talking about the merits of the ?Observer? and Garvin?s leaders. The beautiful weather which has lasted, unbroken, for three weeks came to an end today. It looks as though summer had set in. Read ? ?English Humourists? (W. M. Thackeray)'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Esmond

'Friday 27th August I bought ?Esmond? and ?Westward Ho!? today and started to read the former. Why is Thackeray suffering from a decline? He is the best of them, easily. What novelist is there to rival him in the nineteenth century? Dickens, perhaps, in greatness, but there is no comparison between their writings, they are so completely different from each other. There is no standard, and no need for one. I picked up for 6 cent. a little ?Selected works of Pope. With the ?Dunciad? ?The Rape of the Lock?, ?Essay on Critism?? Fine!'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : [unknown]

'As I began to mend, the Governor, to keep me from brooding too much, gave orders that I was to have all the reading matter I wanted within the limits of the prison library, and my book changed just as often as I liked and at any hour of the day. To a man eager to improve his acquaintance with standard literature such a privilege was immeasurably great, and for the next six weeks or so I browsed among the Victorian novelists - Austin [sic?], the Brontes, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Meredith, Lytton, Kingsley, Reade, Hughes, Trollope and others.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?]      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : The Adventures of Philip

'I have had all things considered and thanks principally to Philip, a very passable Christmas day [...] then went upstairs and read Phillip till lunchtime (you see I adhere to my own views as to how Philip should be spelt).'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson      Print: Serial / periodical

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family

27 January 1918: 'Desmond has read some of the Newcomes lately: finds no depth, but a charming rippling conventional picturesqueness.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Desmond MacCarthy      Print: Unknown

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : unknown

Wednesday 14 February: '10 days recumbent [with headache], sleeping, dreaming, dipping into oh dear how many different books, how capriciously: Thackeray, Young's travels in France [...] then a book a day from the Times [Book Club], Berners, Selincourt & a stout life by Neale of Q. Elizabeth which pretending to impartiality emphasises the double chin & the wig of Mary at the critical moment: a fig for impartial & learned historians! All men are liars.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf      Print: Book

  

Anne Isabella Thackeray : The Village on the Cliff. A Novel.

'I am reading "The Village on the Cliff", and cannot tell you how beautiful I think it. I am inclined to give up literature. [italics]I[end italics] can?t write like that. Never mind, [italics]je serai fidele [end italics].'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Henry Esmond

'they, the Scotts, where [sic] in a state of delight about Esmond, which Thackeray had given them'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: the Scotts     Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Virginians, The

'We rushed here for ten days on Monday; & last night your letter & Macmillan's Mag. followed us, and was received with a hearty greeting. 'We' are Meta, & Julia - for whose benefit we are come, as she has outgrown her strength - six inches in the last twelve months. - We are delighted with [italics] our [end italics] type, & that we don't print in double columns which is so trying to the eyes; we put the page of the Virginians by a page of Macmillan last night & you can't think how much more legible [italics] ours [end italics] was.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Gaskell and her daughters 'Meta' and Julia     Print: Book, Serial / periodical

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Lovel the Widower

'I extremely like & admire Framley Parsonage, - & the Idle Boy; and the Inaugural address. I like Lovel the Widower, only (perhaps because I am stupid,) it is a little confusing on account of its discursiveness, - and V's verses; and oh shame! I have not read the sensible & improving articles.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell      Print: Serial / periodical

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : The History of Pendennis

'The History of Pendennis (2 vols, 1849-50) by William Makepeace Thackeray was published by Bradbury and Evans in twenty-four numbers (twenty-three parts) from November 1848 to December 1850 [...] The edition the Brownings were reading, which had been lent to them by Charles Eliot Norton (see letter 2893 [in source]) was probably the one being published in Leipzig by Bernhard Tauchniz. Issued in three volumes from April 1849 to December 1850, the second volume appeared in March 1850'.

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning     Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : The History of Pendennis

Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Isa Blagden, ?3 December, 1850: 'I send the first volume of Pendennis. We have one more which Robert is finishing'.

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : unknown

'Your mention of Hawthorne puts me in mind to tell you what rabid [underlined] admirers we are of his [...] There is no prose write of the present day I have half the interest in I have in him, his style, in my mind is so beautifully refined and there is such exquisite pathos and quaint humour, and such an awfully [underlined] deep knowledge of human nature, not that hard unloving detestable, and, as it is purely one sided (or wrong [underlined] sided) false reading of it that one finds in Thackeray. He reminds me in many things of Charles Lamb, and of heaps of our rare old English humourists, with their deep pathetic nature--and one faculty he possesses beyond any writer I remember (not dramatic, for then I would certainly remember Shakespeare, and others on further though perhaps) viz. that of exciting you to the highest pitch without on any [underlined] occasion that I am aware of making you feel by his catastrophe ashamed of having been excited. What I mean is, if you have ever read it, such a case as occurs in the "Mysteries of Udolpho" where your disgust is beyond all expression on finding that all your fright about the ghostly creature that has haunted you throughout the volumes has been caused by a pitiful wax image! [...] And no Author I know does [underlined] try to work upon them [i.e. the passions] more, apparently with no [underlined] effort to himself. I cannot satisfy myself as to whether I like his sort of Essays contained in the twice told tales best, or his more finished works such as Blithedale romance. Every touch he adds to any character gives a higher interest to it, so that I should like the longer ones best, but there is a concentration of excellence in the shorter things and passages that strike, in force like daggers, in their beauty and truth, so that I generally end in liking that best which I have read last [...] There are beautiful passages in Longfellow, above all, as far as my knowledge goes in the Golden Legend, some of which in a single reading impressed themselves on my memory.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret De Quincey      Print: Book

  

Thackeray : unknown

'We are in the far west. The journey North was a long one – from 9 am till 6.30 I had a Browning & Thackeray, a Criminal Digest & some need to work to occupy me & so time passed less heavily than I anticipated. Dick napped & read Lytton, growling when I addressed him any remarks – he does not show to advantage when travelling. I told him so when I addressed him like a father on the subject later on.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Cornelia Sorabji      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : [unknown]

'At home there were daily Bible-readings in the family circle for many years, but secular reading aloud happily also found a place. Lucy was "A good reader" and gave them Scott and Thackeray and Tom Moore as well as Shakespeare; Edward read Pickwick.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Housman      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century

'On his [Tennyson's] return [to Farringford] the evening books were Milton, Shakespeare's Sonnets, Thackeray's Humourists, some of Hallam's History and of Carlyle's Cromwell.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred and Emily Tennyson     Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Henry Esmond

'He [Tennyson] would always talk of Thackeray's novels, Esmond, Pendennis, and The Newcomes as being "delicious; they are so mature. But now the days are so full of false sentiment that, as Thackeray said, one cannot draw a man as he should be." He would read and re-read them as well as Walter Scott's and Miss Austen's novels. His comments on Walter Scott and Miss Austen were: "Scott is the most chivalrous literary figure of this century and the author with the widest range since Shakespeare. I think Old Mortality is his greatest novel. The realism and life-likeness of Miss Austen's Dramatis Personae come nearest to those of Shakespeare. Shakespeare however is a sun to which Jane Austen, tho' a bright and true little world, is but an asteroid."'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Pendennis

'He [Tennyson] would always talk of Thackeray's novels, Esmond, Pendennis, and The Newcomes as being "delicious; they are so mature. But now the days are so full of false sentiment that, as Thackeray said, one cannot draw a man as he should be." He would read and re-read them as well as Walter Scott's and Miss Austen's novels. His comments on Walter Scott and Miss Austen were: "Scott is the most chivalrous literary figure of this century and the author with the widest range since Shakespeare. I think Old Mortality is his greatest novel. The realism and life-likeness of Miss Austen's Dramatis Personae come nearest to those of Shakespeare. Shakespeare however is a sun to which Jane Austen, tho' a bright and true little world, is but an asteroid."'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : The Newcomes

'He [Tennyson] would always talk of Thackeray's novels, Esmond, Pendennis, and The Newcomes as being "delicious; they are so mature. But now the days are so full of false sentiment that, as Thackeray said, one cannot draw a man as he should be." He would read and re-read them as well as Walter Scott's and Miss Austen's novels. His comments on Walter Scott and Miss Austen were: "Scott is the most chivalrous literary figure of this century and the author with the widest range since Shakespeare. I think Old Mortality is his greatest novel. The realism and life-likeness of Miss Austen's Dramatis Personae come nearest to those of Shakespeare. Shakespeare however is a sun to which Jane Austen, tho' a bright and true little world, is but an asteroid."'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : The Newcomers

'Stopped at home & read "The Newcomers" until nearly mid-night.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Vanity Fair

'I was sitting between one & two o'clock quietly enjoying a chapter in "Vanity Fair" when there was a bustling noise [?] to the Gaol. Polly looked out of the window & immediately called out "Mr Castieau there is some prisoners escaping."'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Vanity Fair

'I have been reading "Vanity Fair" again & found it even more enjoyable than when I read it for the first time. I really think I like the Book better even than any of those of Dickens. "Becky Sharp" is prodigious. I thought however it to be a great mistake to pull Mr Sedley down so quickly after his bankruptcy & make him so soon appear so dreadfully shabby, humble & contemptible, particularly as "Jos" did what was necessary to prevent his parents being in want as he is stated to have sent instructions to his agents to furnish what money was required. The description given of poor old "Sedley" is the most painful & most truthful description of a ruined man without hopes or friends but the fall to such a condition would be very gradual & Sedley had'ent the time given him to arrive at it any more than his glossy coats had had time to become white in the Seams & Greasy in the collars.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Vanity Fair

'In the evening I went to "the Yorick" & had a look at the papers. Came home & went on reading Vanity Fair.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Vanity Fair

'Came home & finished "Vanity Fair" before tea-time.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : The Newcomes

'In the evening wrote a page in my Diary & dreamed away over "The Newcomes" until it was time to go to bed. The little girls & Harry stayed with me a good deal during the day & I read some little stories to them & Walter'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : [unknown]

'I stayed up very late to-night reading Thackeray's scraps contributed in the olden days to Punch & Frazer's Magazine. Some of them interested me very much though I was reading under difficulties for the book was one that had been ill used in the Gaol & it frequently happened that when I came to some particularly interesting point there was a leaf gone & the thread of the story lost in consequence'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : [unknown]

'Read some of Thackeray to Mrs Castieau & the youngsters this evening. The account of Master Augustus's visit to the pantomime delighted Harry very much & he could'ent help noticing a great similarity in his own manner with that of the young gentleman who accompanied Mr [Spee?] to the play.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : 

'Miss Goadby then read a paper entitled "A View of Thackeray from the Roundabout Papers" & readings from the same author were then given by F.J. Edminson, C.L. Stansfield, Miss Pollard, T.T. Cass & S.A. Reynolds'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : 

'Miss Goadby then read a paper entitled "A View of Thackeray from the Roundabout Papers" & readings from the same author were then given by F.J. Edminson, C.L. Stansfield, Miss Pollard, T.T. Cass & S.A. Reynolds'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: T.T. Cass      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : 

'Miss Goadby then read a paper entitled "A View of Thackeray from the Roundabout Papers" & readings from the same author were then given by F.J. Edminson, C.L. Stansfield, Miss Pollard, T.T. Cass & S.A. Reynolds'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Sylvanus A. Reynolds      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : 

'Miss Goadby then read a paper entitled "A View of Thackeray from the Roundabout Papers" & readings from the same author were then given by F.J. Edminson, C.L. Stansfield, Miss Pollard, T.T. Cass & S.A. Reynolds'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick J. Edminson      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : 

'Miss Goadby then read a paper entitled "A View of Thackeray from the Roundabout Papers" & readings from the same author were then given by F.J. Edminson, C.L. Stansfield, Miss Pollard, T.T. Cass & S.A. Reynolds'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Pollard      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Some Roundabout Papers

'Miss Goadby then read a paper entitled "A View of Thackeray from the Roundabout Papers" & readings from the same author were then given by F.J. Edminson, C.L. Stansfield, Miss Pollard, T.T. Cass & S.A. Reynolds'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Goadby      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Pendennis

'The evening was given over to the consideration of Thackeray. A paper by J.J. Cooper was read by Miss Marriage followed by readings from his works Charles E. Stansfield from Pendennis Charles I. Evans from Newcomes Mrs W.H. Smith from Vanity Fair H.M Wallis from Roundabout Papers H.R. Smith from Esmond'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Newcomes, The

'The evening was given over to the consideration of Thackeray. A paper by J.J. Cooper was read by Miss Marriage followed by readings from his works Charles E. Stansfield from Pendennis Charles I. Evans from Newcomes Mrs W.H. Smith from Vanity Fair H.M Wallis from Roundabout Papers H.R. Smith from Esmond'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Vanity Fair

'The evening was given over to the consideration of Thackeray. A paper by J.J. Cooper was read by Miss Marriage followed by readings from his works Charles E. Stansfield from Pendennis Charles I. Evans from Newcomes Mrs W.H. Smith from Vanity Fair H.M Wallis from Roundabout Papers H.R. Smith from Esmond'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Ann Smith      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Roundabout Papers

'The evening was given over to the consideration of Thackeray. A paper by J.J. Cooper was read by Miss Marriage followed by readings from his works Charles E. Stansfield from Pendennis Charles I. Evans from Newcomes Mrs W.H. Smith from Vanity Fair H.M Wallis from Roundabout Papers H.R. Smith from Esmond'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Henry Esmond

'The evening was given over to the consideration of Thackeray. A paper by J.J. Cooper was read by Miss Marriage followed by readings from his works Charles E. Stansfield from Pendennis Charles I. Evans from Newcomes Mrs W.H. Smith from Vanity Fair H.M Wallis from Roundabout Papers H.R. Smith from Esmond'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Esmond

18 July 1876: 'Left Paris by tidal service at half-past nine, reaching London before seven... I am reading again, with great delight, Thackeray's Esmond. Since I left England [on ceramics-collecting expedition] I have read Dickens's Tale of Two Cities, Smollett's Peregrine Pickle and Mrs Elliot's Old Court Life in France, various in style, all in their way of much interest to me.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Humorists

[following journal entry for 1 November 1879] 'The next few days [following seven weeks' travels in Europe] were occupied unpacking, after which the Schreibers went to Canford, the railway journey from London being enlivened by Thackeray's Humorists.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Humorists

7 December 1879: 'I was a little chilly in the morning [...] and I feared I had taken cold, so I did not go out. Read over the fire. First Freeman's account of the Bayeux tapestry, then some of Thackeray's Humorists.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber      Print: Book

  

Miss Thackeray : 'sketch [on Mme de Sevigne]'

18 November 1881: 'This morning I laid in a stock of Tauchnitzes, and am beginning a pleasant sketch of Miss Thackeray's on Mme. de Sevigne.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber      Print: Book

  

Miss Thackeray : 'sketch [of Maria Edgeworth]'

20 December 1884: 'I have been going on with the reading of Carlyle's life [...] Today I have been amusing myself with Miss Thackeray's sketches of Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Barbauld and Mrs Opie. I read a good deal of one kind and another, but forget it all as soon as read.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber      Print: Unknown

  

Miss Thackeray : 'sketch [of Anna Laetitia Barbauld]'

20 December 1884: 'I have been going on with the reading of Carlyle's life [...] Today I have been amusing myself with Miss Thackeray's sketches of Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Barbauld and Mrs Opie. I read a good deal of one kind and another, but forget it all as soon as read.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber      Print: Unknown

  

Miss Thackeray : 'sketch [of Amelia Opie]'

20 December 1884: 'I have been going on with the reading of Carlyle's life [...] Today I have been amusing myself with Miss Thackeray's sketches of Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Barbauld and Mrs Opie. I read a good deal of one kind and another, but forget it all as soon as read.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber      Print: Unknown

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : Essay on Jonathan Swift

'Geo Burrow then read portions of Thackeray's essay on Swift. H. R. Smith read several short extracts from the Journal to Stella. After supper Miss D. Brain read several passages from Gulliver's travels & T. C. Elliott read from the Drapers Letters & explained them Alfred Rawlings read from the Tale of a Tub'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: George Burrow      Print: Book

  

William Makepeace Thackeray : 

Charlotte Bronte (as 'Currer Bell') to her publisher, W. S. Williams, 11 December 1847: 'I hardly ever felt delight equal to that which cheered me when I received your letter containing an extract from a note by Mr Thackeray, in which he expressed himself gratified with the perusal of "Jane Eyre." Mr Thackeray is a keen, ruthless satirist. I had never perused his writings but with blended feelings of admiration and indignation. Critics, it appears to me, do not know what an intellectual boa-constrictor he is [...] his is a most scalping humour, a most deadly brilliancy: he does not play with his prey, he coils round it and crushes it in his rings [comments further].'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte      Print: Unknown

 

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