William Makepeace Thackeray

William Makepeace Thackeray (July 18, 1811 – December 24, 1863) was an English novelist of the nineteenth century. He was famous for his satirical works, particularly Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of English society. Its heroine, Becky Sharp, is one of the stronger female characters to emerge from the nineteenth century. In Thackeray's own day, some commentators, such as Anthony Trollope ranked his The History of Henry Esmond as his greatest work, perhaps because it expressed Victorian values of duty and earnestness, as did some of his other later novels. It is perhaps for this reason that they have not survived as well as Vanity Fair, which satirizes those values. The power of satire lies in its ability to create sympathetically treat human foibles while at the same time lampooning them, as Thackeray does in Vanity Fair.