Click on the book to read one of its chapters

In the 19th Century William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) was often compared with Dickens. The reading public was more or less divided into Dickensians and Thackerayans. Dickens wrote about the lower classes, Thackeray about the upper classes. Dickens’s characters tend to run into caricatures, Thackeray’s characters are almost always real-life people with their virtues and vices. Nowadays Dickens is the undisputed master among Victorian novelists and considerably more widely read than Thackeray. In fact, Thackeray’s books (eight novels and several short stories) have fallen more or less into neglect. This is a pity, for Thackeray is a great story-teller and a master of irony.

Like Dickens’s David Copperfield, The History of Pendennis is a Bildungsroman and partly autobiographical. When the novel starts, the 18 years old Arthur Pendennis (‘Pen’ to his friends) is hopelessly in love with the actress Emily Fotheringay. His mother, a widow, calls for the aid of Arthur’s uncle, Major Arthur Pendennis, who cruelly puts an end to the relationship by telling Emily’s father that Pen is not rich. Pen, heartbroken, leaves home to study at St Boniface’s college in Oxbridge. There he lives extravagantly. After two years, he fails his final examination. He later returns and obtains a degree after all. Pen sets out for London and starts living as a journalist (like Thackeray himself did). There Pen meets other girls. Due to his uncle’s schemings he is almost married to Blanche Amory, a baronet’s daughter, but she leaves him for a richer man. At the end of the novel Pen marries his foster-sister Laura. The novel is remarkably different from David Copperfield. David is thoroughly good and has few weaknesses, Pen has several. David Copperfield is alternately tragic and comic, in Pendennis an ironic, sometimes cynical, tone is maintained throughout the book. Both books are masterpieces. please inform me when this book comes out