Selected letters of William Makepeace Thackeray

In Selected Letters of William Makepeace Thackeray, Edgar F. Harden provides a lively and accessible framework to Thackeray's letters, diaries, and comical illustrations, making them available for the first time to general audience.

Harden traces growth and development as a writer, from his school days in Southhampton to Cambridge University, which he left without a degree, to his ascendence as a writer. Harden includes seventy-five of Thackeray's comical illustrations, which support and enhance the letters they accompany.

Harden has chosen the most revealing of Thackeray's many letters to his family and friends, beginning with a letter, written when he was seven years old, to his mother. Among the letters included are those to Thackeray's publishers, which remind us of his extraordinary energy as a writer, as well as of his sometimes desperate need to support himself financially.