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 First edition title page | |
| Author | William Makepeace Thackeray |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Richard Doyle |
| Country | England |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Publisher | Bradbury and Evans |
Publication date | 1854–1855 |
| Preceded by | Pendennis |
| Followed by | A Shabby Genteel Story |
The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family is a novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, first published in 1854 and 1855.
The Newcomes was published serially over about two years, as Thackeray himself says in one of the novel's final chapters. The novel shows its serial origin: it is very long (an undated but clearly very old edition with tiny type fills 551 pages) and its events occur over many years and in several countries before the reader reaches the predictable conclusion. The main part of The Newcomes is set a decade or two after the action of Vanity Fair , and some of the characters in Vanity Fair are mentioned peripherally in The Newcomes. The narrator is Arthur Pendennis, the protagonist of Pendennis . It was illustrated by Richard Doyle, both in literal renderings of the scenes and in symbolic and fanciful depictions of events and characters. [1]
The novel tells the story of Colonel Thomas Newcome, a virtuous and upstanding character. It is equally the story of Colonel Newcome's son, Clive, who studies and travels for the purpose of becoming a painter, although the profession is frowned on by some of his relatives and acquaintances—notably Clive's snobbish, backstabbing cousin Barnes Newcome.
Colonel Newcome goes out to India for decades, then returns to England where Clive meets his cousin Ethel. After years in England, the colonel returns to India for another several years and while he is there, Clive travels Europe and his love for Ethel waxes and wanes. Dozens of background characters appear, fade, and reappear.
The colonel and Clive are only the central figures in The Newcomes, the action of which begins before the colonel's birth. Over several generations the Newcome family rises into wealth and respectability as bankers and begin to marry into the minor aristocracy. A theme that runs throughout the novel is the practice of marrying for money. Herein we find first use of the coined word "capitalism", as reference to an economic system. Religion is another theme, particularly Methodism.
... Truth is never sacrificed to piquancy. The characters in the 'Newcomes' are not more witty, wise, or farcical than their prototypes; the dull, the insipid, and the foolish, speak according to their own fashion and not with the tongue of the author; the events which befall them are nowhere made exciting at the expense of probability. Just as the stream of life runs on through these volumes, so may it be seen to flow in the world itself by whoever takes up the same position on the bank. [2]
Perhaps one of the novel's greatest strengths is that it contains hundreds of references to the popular and educated culture of the time and thus gives a better idea than most contemporary novels of what it was like to live in England then— almost a miniature education in the Victorian era. Thackeray mentions poets, painters, novelists (some of the characters are reading Oliver Twist), politics, and other people, events and things both familiar and obscure to the 21st-century reader—and does so in a natural way that enhances the story. There are also plenty of Latin, French, Italian and ancient Greek phrases—all untranslated.
Colonel Newcome came to be an emblem of virtue for a period, often referred to at the turn of the 20th century. For example, in his autobiography, Theodore Roosevelt described his uncle, James Dunwoody Bulloch, as "a veritable Colonel Newcome". [3]
Ethel Barrymore was named after the character in the novel.
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The Newcomes public domain audiobook at LibriVox | Works |
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William Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelist and illustrator. He is known for his satirical works, particularly his 1847–1848 novel Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of British society, and the 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon, which was adapted for a 1975 film by Stanley Kubrick.
Vanity Fair is a novel by the English author William Makepeace Thackeray, which follows the lives of Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley amid their friends and families during and after the Napoleonic Wars. It was first published as a 19-volume monthly serial from 1847 to 1848, carrying the subtitle Pen and Pencil Sketches of English Society, which reflects both its satirisation of early 19th-century British society and the many illustrations drawn by Thackeray to accompany the text. It was published as a single volume in 1848 with the subtitle A Novel without a Hero, reflecting Thackeray's interest in deconstructing his era's conventions regarding literary heroism. It is sometimes considered the "principal founder" of the Victorian domestic novel.
The Luck of Barry Lyndon is a picaresque novel by English author William Makepeace Thackeray, first published as a serial in Fraser's Magazine in 1844, about a member of the Irish gentry trying to become a member of the English aristocracy. Thackeray, who based the novel on the life and exploits of the Anglo-Irish rake and fortune-hunter Andrew Robinson Stoney, later reissued it under the title The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq. The novel is narrated by Lyndon himself, who functions as a quintessentially unreliable narrator.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1848.
Jean-Baptiste Antoine Marcelin Marbot, known as Marcellin Marbot, was a French general, famous for his memoirs depicting the Napoleonic age of warfare. He belongs to a family that has distinguished itself particularly in the career of arms, giving three generals to France in less than 50 years. His elder brother, Antoine Adolphe Marcelin Marbot, was also a military man of some note.
Ethel Barrymore was an American actress and a member of the Barrymore family of actors. Barrymore was a stage, screen and radio actress whose career spanned six decades, and was regarded as "The First Lady of the American Theatre". She received four nominations for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, winning for None but the Lonely Heart (1944).
Robert Smith Surtees was an English editor, novelist and sporting writer, widely known as R. S. Surtees. He was the second son of Anthony Surtees of Hamsterley Hall, a member of an old County Durham family. He is remembered for his invented character of Jorrocks, a vulgar but good-natured sporting cockney grocer.
Margaret Oliphant Wilson Oliphant was a Scottish novelist and historical writer, who usually wrote as Mrs. Oliphant. Her fictional works cover "domestic realism, the historical novel and tales of the supernatural".
Ethel is an Old English word meaning "noble", today often used as a feminine given name.
Victorian literature is English literature during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901). The 19th century is considered by some to be the Golden Age of English Literature, especially for British novels. It was in the Victorian era that the novel became the leading literary genre in English. English writing from this era reflects the major transformations in most aspects of English life, from scientific, economic, and technological advances to changes in class structures and the role of religion in society. The number of new novels published each year increased from 100 at the start of the period to 1000 by the end of it. Famous novelists from this period include Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, the three Brontë sisters, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Rudyard Kipling.
The History of Pendennis: His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy (1848–50) is a novel by the English author William Makepeace Thackeray. It is set in 19th-century England, particularly in London. The main hero is a young English gentleman Arthur Pendennis, who is born in the country and sets out for London to seek his place in life and society. The novel took two years for Thackeray to write and, in line with other Thackeray works, most notably Vanity Fair, it offers an insightful and satiric picture of human character and aristocratic society. The characters include the snobbish social hanger-on Major Pendennis and the tipsy Captain Costigan. Miss Amory and Sir Francis Clavering are somewhat reminiscent of Becky Sharp and Sir Pitt from Vanity Fair.
The History of Henry Esmond is a historical novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, originally published in 1852. The book tells the story of the early life of Henry Esmond, a colonel in the service of Queen Anne of England. A typical example of Victorian historical novels, Thackeray's work of historical fiction tells its tale against the backdrop of late 17th- and early 18th-century England – specifically, major events surrounding the English Restoration – and utilises characters both real and imagined. It weaves its central character into a number of events such as the Glorious Revolution, the War of the Spanish Succession, the Hamilton–Mohun Duel and the Hanoverian Succession.
Events from the year 1855 in the United Kingdom.
Rebecca "Becky" Sharp, later describing herself as Rebecca, Lady Crawley, is the main protagonist of William Makepeace Thackeray's 1847–48 novel Vanity Fair. She is presented as a cynical social climber who uses her charms to fascinate and seduce upper-class men. This is in contrast with the clinging, dependent Amelia Sedley, her friend from school. Becky then uses Amelia as a stepping stone to gain social position. Sharp functions as a picara—a picaresque heroine—by being a social outsider who is able to expose the manners of the upper gentry to ridicule.
The Oriental Club in London is an exclusive Private Members’ Club established in 1824. Charles Graves describes it as fine in quality as White's but with the space of infinitely larger clubs. It is located in Stratford Place, near Oxford Street and Bond Street.
Fashionable novels, also called silver-fork novels, were a 19th-century genre of English literature that depicted the lives of the upper class and the aristocracy.
The Adventures of Philip on his Way Through the World: Shewing Who Robbed Him, Who Helped Him, and Who Passed Him By is the final novel by the English author William Makepeace Thackeray, originally published in 1861–1862. It was the last novel Thackeray completed, and harks back to several of his previous ones, involving as it does characters from A Shabby Genteel Story and being, like The Newcomes, narrated by the title character of his Pendennis. In recent years it has not found as much favour from either readers or critics as Thackeray's early novels.
Vanity Fair was a British weekly magazine that was published from 1868 to 1914. Founded by Thomas Gibson Bowles in London, the magazine included articles on fashion, theatre, current events as well as word games and serial fiction. The cream of the period's "society magazines", it is best known for its witty prose and caricatures of famous people of Victorian and Edwardian society, including artists, athletes, royalty, statesmen, scientists, authors, actors, business people and scholars.
The Book of Snobs is a collection of satirical works by William Makepeace Thackeray published in book form in 1848, the same year as his more famous Vanity Fair. The pieces first appeared in fifty-three weekly pieces from February 28, 1846 to February 27, 1847, as "The Snobs of England, by one of themselves", in the satirical magazine Punch. The pieces, which were immensely popular and thrust Thackeray into widespread public view, were "rigorously revised" before their collection in book form and omitted the numbers which dealt with then current political issues.
Jane Octavia Brookfield was a literary hostess and writer, best known for her platonic friendship with William Makepeace Thackeray. She also wrote four novels; some critics have drawn parallels between the events in these novels and her relationship with Thackeray.
