William Makepeace Thackeray collection
Overview
Small collection of literary texts and letters by the English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) and gathered together by Spencer Research Library staff.
Dates
- Creation: 1838, 1860
Creator
Conditions Governing Access
No access restrictions.
Conditions Governing Use
Spencer Library staff may determine use restrictions dependent on the physical condition of manuscript materials.
Biography of William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863)
William Makepeace Thackeray was born in Calcutta, India, the only son of an East India Company administrator, Richmond Thackeray. After his father's death in 1815, Thackeray was sent to England, where his mother later joined him in 1820, after having married an engineering officer in 1817.
Thackeray attended grammar and public schools before entering Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied from 1828-1830 without obtaining a degree. He studied law at Middle Temple in 1831-1833 and considered becoming a painter as a career.
In the mid-1830s while studying art in Paris, he married, and after 1837 he returned to England to take up journalism. In 1847-1848 his novel Vanity Fair was published serially, which gave him popular and economic success.
Thackeray went onto write other historical and contemporary novels, including The Newcomes (1853-1855) and The Virginians (1857-1859). In 1860 he founded and became editor of The Cornhill Magazine.
[Information retrieved from Encyclopedia Britannica, "William Makepeace Thackaray," https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Makepeace-Thackeray.]
Extent
3 folders
Language of Materials
English
Physical Location
MS P317
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Item 1: purchase, estate of Eleanor Witty of London, 1968. Item 2: purchase, E. von Scherling, [before 1963]. Item 3: gift, William P. Albrecht, 1971.
Subject
- Title
- Guide to the William Makepeace Thackeray Collection
- Subtitle
- William Makepeace Thackeray collection
- Author
- Finding aid prepared by alh, 1968, 1970, 1973; revised by ksc, 2006. Finding aid encoded by skt, 2006; revised by mwh, 2020.
- Date
- 2020-01
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- Finding aid written in English.
- Finding aid permalink
- http://hdl.handle.net/10407/9453924976
- Preferred citation
-
William Makepeace Thackeray collection, MS P317, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas
Repository Details
Part of the University of Kansas. Kenneth Spencer Research Library Repository