This book conveys Thackeray's development as a novelist, lecturer in Great Britain and the United States, familiar essayist, and shaper of cultural awareness as editor of a major new journal - a development especially growing out of the achievement of Vanity Fair , where he has so powerfully articulated the comical and absurd system of forces defining the human existence that he and his readers shared. Articulating the connections among Thackeray's varied work and activities, Harden reveals the broadening imaginative growth and deepening understanding of a supremely insightful perceiver and critic of human life.
Reviews of previous books
Thackeray the Writer: From Journalism to Vanity Fair by Edgar Harden
'Harden's approach usefully supplements biographical responses to Thackeray's hardest years and works which focus on the writer's negotiation of the publishing market-place' - In Brief, Times Literary Supplement
'The present work will help even old hands to see the way in which [Thackeray] developed...into the humorist with the truly complex world view and moral subtlety of Vanity Fair.' - The Thackeray Newsletter
The Selected Letters of William Makepeace Thackeray by Edgar Harden
'These letters, so amusing and so touching are a wonderful introduction not only to Thackeray the novelist but to the letter-writing world of the Victorians.' - Contemporary Review
'some of the warmest and wittiest documents to survive from that age of great letter-writing...anyone who glimpses the monument uncovered by this inspiring excavation of Thackeray's heart will encounter both a great writer and a noble personality.' - Daily Telegraph
'A lively collection of Thackeray's letters, diaries and comical illustrations, Harden's edition...is essential reading for all students of the Victorian novel.' - The Year's Work in English Studies
Edgar Harden, with the help of his publishers, has supplied us with a sampling of Thackeray's epistolary art in a form and at a price for every person attracted to Thackeray's works'. - The Thackeray Newsletter
Thackeray the Writer: From Journalism to Vanity Fair by Edgar Harden
'Harden's approach usefully supplements biographical responses to Thackeray's hardest years and works which focus on the writer's negotiation of the publishing market-place' - In Brief, Times Literary Supplement
'The present work will help even old hands to see the way in which [Thackeray] developed...into the humorist with the truly complex world view and moral subtlety of Vanity Fair.' - The Thackeray Newsletter
The Selected Letters of William Makepeace Thackeray by Edgar Harden
'These letters, so amusing and so touching are a wonderful introduction not only to Thackeray the novelist but to the letter-writing world of the Victorians.' - Contemporary Review
'some of the warmest and wittiest documents to survive from that age of great letter-writing...anyone who glimpses the monument uncovered by this inspiring excavation of Thackeray's heart will encounter both a great writer and a noble personality.' - Daily Telegraph
'A lively collection of Thackeray's letters, diaries and comical illustrations, Harden's edition...is essential reading for all students of the Victorian novel.' - The Year's Work in English Studies
Edgar Harden, with the help of his publishers, has supplied us with a sampling of Thackeray's epistolary art in a form and at a price for every person attracted to Thackeray's works'. - The Thackeray Newsletter