Early life Thackeray, an only child, was born in
Calcutta,
British India, where his father, Richmond Thackeray (1 September 1781 – 13 September 1815), was secretary to the Board of Revenue in the
East India Company. His mother, Anne Becher (1792–1864), was the second daughter of Harriet Becher and John Harman Becher, who was also a secretary (writer) for the East India Company. His father was a grandson of
Thomas Thackeray (1693–1760), headmaster of
Harrow School. Richmond died in 1815, which caused Anne to send her son to England that same year, while she remained in India. The ship on which he travelled made a short stopover at
Saint Helena, where the imprisoned
Napoleon was pointed out to him. Once in England, he was educated at schools in
Southampton and
Chiswick, and then at
Charterhouse School, where he overlapped with
John Leech. Thackeray disliked Charterhouse, and parodied it in his fiction as "Slaughterhouse". Nevertheless, Thackeray was honoured in the Charterhouse Chapel with a monument after his death.
College education Illness in his last year at Charterhouse, during which he reportedly grew to his full height of , postponed his matriculation at
Trinity College, Cambridge, until February 1829. Thackeray then travelled for some time on
Continental Europe, visiting Paris and
Weimar, where he met
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He returned to England and began to study law at the
Middle Temple, but soon gave that up. On reaching age 21, he came into his inheritance from his father, but he squandered much of it on gambling and on funding two unsuccessful newspapers,
The National Standard and
The Constitutional, for which he had hoped to write. He also lost a good part of his fortune in the collapse of two Indian banks. Forced to consider a profession to support himself, he turned first to art, which he studied in Paris, but did not pursue it, except in later years as the illustrator of some of his own novels and other writings.
Marriage and children Thackeray's years of semi-idleness ended on 20 August 1836, when he married Isabella Gethin Shawe (1816–1894), second daughter of Isabella Creagh Shawe and Matthew Shawe, a colonel who had died after distinguished service, primarily in India. The Thackerays had three children, all daughters:
Anne Isabella (1837–1919), Jane (who died at eight months old), and
Harriet Marian (1840–1875), who married Sir
Leslie Stephen, editor, biographer and philosopher.
Professional journalist Thackeray now began "writing for his life", as he put it, turning to journalism in an effort to support his young family. He primarily worked for ''
Fraser's Magazine, a sharp-witted and sharp-tongued conservative publication for which he produced art criticism, short fictional sketches, and two longer fictional works, Catherine and The Luck of Barry Lyndon. Between 1837 and 1840, he also reviewed books for The Times''. He was also a regular contributor to
The Morning Chronicle and
The Foreign Quarterly Review. Later, through his connection to the illustrator
John Leech, he began writing for the newly created magazine
Punch, in which he published
The Snob Papers, later collected as
The Book of Snobs. This work popularised the modern meaning of the word "snob". Thackeray was a regular contributor to
Punch between 1843 and 1854. , 1845
Mental decline of his wife and romantic relationships In Thackeray's personal life, his wife Isabella succumbed to depression after the birth of their third child in 1840. Finding that he could get no work done at home, he spent more and more time away, until September 1840, when he realised how grave his wife's condition was. Struck by guilt, he set out with his wife to Ireland. During the crossing, she threw herself from a water-closet into the sea, but she was pulled from the waters. They fled back home after a four-week battle with her mother. From November 1840 to February 1842, Isabella was in and out of professional care, as her condition waxed and waned. After his wife's illness, Thackeray never established another permanent relationship. He did pursue other women, however, in particular Mrs.
Jane Brookfield and Sally Baxter. In 1851, Mr. Brookfield barred Thackeray from further visits or correspondence with Jane. Baxter, an American twenty years Thackeray's junior whom he met during a lecture tour in New York City in 1852, married another man in 1855.
Anti-Irish works for Punch In the early 1840s, Thackeray had some success with two travel books,
The Paris Sketch Book and
The Irish Sketch Book, the latter marked by its hostility towards
Irish Catholics. However, as the book appealed to
anti-Irish sentiment in Britain at the time, Thackeray was given the job of being
Punch's Irish expert, often under the pseudonym Hibernis Hibernior ("more Irish than the Irish"). He remained "at the top of the tree", as he put it, for the rest of his life, during which he produced several large novels, notably
Pendennis,
The Newcomes, and
The History of Henry Esmond, despite various illnesses, including a near-fatal one that struck him in 1849 in the middle of writing
Pendennis. He twice visited the United States on lecture tours during this period. Longtime
Washington journalist
B.P. Poore described Thackeray on one of those tours:The citizens of Washington enjoyed a rare treat when Thackeray came to deliver his lectures on the English essayists, wits, and humorists of the eighteenth century. Accustomed to the spread-eagle style of oratory too prevalent at the
Capitol, they were delighted with the pleasing voice and easy manner of the burly, gray-haired, rosy-cheeked Briton, who made no gestures, but stood most of the time with his hands in his pockets, as if he were talking with friends at a cozy fireside. Thackeray also gave lectures in London on the English humorists of the eighteenth century, and on the first four
Hanoverian monarchs. The latter series was published in book form in 1861 as
The Four Georges: Sketches of Manners, Morals, Court, and Town Life . but he was never comfortable in the role, preferring to contribute to the magazine as the writer of a column called "Roundabout Papers".
Health problems Thackeray's health worsened during the 1850s, and he was plagued by a recurring
stricture of the urethra that laid him up for days at a time. He also felt that he had lost much of his creative impetus. He worsened matters by excessive eating and drinking and avoiding exercise, though he enjoyed riding (he kept a horse). He has been described as "the greatest literary glutton who ever lived". His main activity apart from writing was "gutting and gorging". He could not break his addiction to spicy peppers, further ruining his digestion. , London, photographed in 2014
Death and funeral On 23 December 1863, after returning from dining out and before dressing for bed, he suffered a stroke. He was found dead in his bed the following morning. His death at the age of fifty-two was unexpected and shocked his family, his friends and the reading public. An estimated 7,000 people attended his funeral at
Kensington Gardens. He was buried on 29 December at
Kensal Green Cemetery, and a memorial bust sculpted by
Marochetti can be found in
Westminster Abbey. ==Works==