William Makepeace Thackeray

William Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelist born in Calcutta, where his father served the East India Company. Sent to England as a boy after his father's death, he was educated at Charterhouse and Trinity College, Cambridge, which he left without a degree. He studied law and art, travelled in Germany and France, and lost much of his inheritance before turning to journalism and periodical writing under numerous pen names. His reputation rests chiefly on Vanity Fair (1847-48), a wide survey of English society, and on The History of Henry Esmond (1852). He edited the Cornhill Magazine and died suddenly in London.