. Lives of great English writers from Chaucer to Browning. orld, it found ex-pression not, as with Carlyle, in rage and denunciations,but in a humor which moved between the extremes oflaughter and tears, and in that form of fiction whichexposes the follies and hypocrisy of mankind rather thanits great vices and great virtues. WilHam Makepeace Thackeray was born July 18,1811, at Calcutta. His great-grandfather was arch-deacon of Surrey, while his grandfather, his father, andseveral of his uncles had been distinguished in the civilservice of the East India Company. The father diedwhen Thackeray
. Lives of great English writers from Chaucer to Browning. orld, it found ex-pression not, as with Carlyle, in rage and denunciations,but in a humor which moved between the extremes oflaughter and tears, and in that form of fiction whichexposes the follies and hypocrisy of mankind rather thanits great vices and great virtues. WilHam Makepeace Thackeray was born July 18,1811, at Calcutta. His great-grandfather was arch-deacon of Surrey, while his grandfather, his father, andseveral of his uncles had been distinguished in the civilservice of the East India Company. The father diedwhen Thackeray was five years old, and the latter wassent back to England in 1817, living there with anaunt. His mother was married soon after in India to aMajor Smyth, coming, however, to England with herhusband in 1821. At the age of eleven Thackeray wassent to the Charterhouse School, and remained there tillhe was seventeen. His experiences are described withfair accuracy in the story of Pendennis, where theschool is called Greyfriars, and the place itself is fondly. In 1854. After a drawing by Samuel Laure WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 487 pictured in the latter chapters of The Newcomes. prints the recollections of a school-comrade,who remembered breaking Thackerays nose in a fight,and admiring the little poems and parodies whichthe victim wrote in the latter years of his course. Thebroken nose remained as a deformity throughout thenovelists life, and spoiled an otherwise handsome with his great height (he was well over six feet),his bulk, and the enormous size of his head, this defectlent itself easily to caricature, but he was not verysensitive about it, and loved to tell how he proposed toa traveling showman who had just lost the giant of theshow, that he should take the giants place. You renigh tall enough, was the answer, but Im afraidyoure too hugly. One of his friends at Charterhousewas John Leech, afterwards his fellow worker on a short residence
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectenglishliterature
