An Account of Thackeray, by Himself

Abstract

From ‘Le Roman de moeurs en Angleterre. — La Foire aux vanites’,Revue des deux Mondes, Feb 1849, pp. 538–40. Several years later, Thackeray wrote to another Frenchman interested in contemporary English literature, Amedee Pichot: ‘In an article about Vanity Fair years ago Chasles applied to me for and used a biography — wh I wrote and he “arranged” for French readers’ (LPP, iii, 411; cf. his letter to Chasles, 6 Feb 1849, LPP, ii, 503n). The extract here translated indicates, therefore, how Thackeray was willing to present himself to the public at this time, when fame had lately come to him. My collection Dickens: Interviews and Recollections similarly begins (i, 1–2) with a letter in which Dickens was briefing a French journalist about his early life. Thackeray is more informative, and very much more candid about his misfortunes and mistakes.