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William Makepeace Thackeray, detail of an oil painting by Samuel Laurence; in the National Portrait … (credit: Courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London)

(born July 18, 1811, Calcutta, India — died Dec. 24, 1863, London, Eng.) English novelist. He studied law and art but soon became a prolific writer for periodicals, using a variety of pen names. His early writings appear in such volumes as The Book of Snobs (1848), a collection of his articles from Punch; and Miscellanies (1855 – 57), which includes the historical novel Barry Lyndon (1844). His fame rests chiefly on the novels Vanity Fair (1847 – 48), a panoramic survey of English manners and human frailties set in the Napoleonic era, and Henry Esmond (1852), set in the early 18th century. Pendennis (1848 – 50) is a partly fictionalized autobiography. In his time he was regarded as the only possible rival of Charles Dickens for his pictures of contemporary life, but his popularity declined in the 20th century.

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