- Paperback: 384 pages
- Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks; New edition edition (22 April 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0192836285
- ISBN-13: 978-0192836281
- Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 12.8 x 2.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 864,515 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Barry Lyndon
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Product Description
Product Description
First published in 1844, this is Thackeray's earliest substantial work of fiction and perhaps his most original. The text is that of Saintbury's 1908 Oxford edition which incorporates Thackeray's revisions.
About the Author
Thackeray, an only child, was born in Calcutta. He studied at Cambridge, but, never a keen student, he left the University in 1830 to travel the continent. He began to study law but gave it up and squandered much of his inheritance on gambling and poor investments. He studied art in Paris, but he did not pursue that professionally either, except to illustrate his own novels.He was a successful novelist, earning the adulation of the very people he satirized. His death at 53 was unexpected.
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First Sentence
SINCE the days of Adam, there has been hardly a mischief done in this world but a woman has been at the bottom of it. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
SINCE the days of Adam, there has been hardly a mischief done in this world but a woman has been at the bottom of it. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Following in the footsteps of Fielding and Smollett, William Thackeray attempts to relate the tale of a lovable rogue, Redmond Barry, in the picaresque style. Narrated in the first person, distinctly unlovable Barry is the classic `unreliable narrator'. Born into insignificant Irish gentry the vain, narcissistic and self-deluding Barry is forced to flee from his native Ireland at the age of fifteen after apparently killing a man in a duel. First joining the British army and then pressed into the Prussian army during the Seven Years War he fights a few battles, deserts and then travels around Europe hobnobbing with the imbecilic European aristocracy and passing his time womanising, gambling and amassing a fortune. He finally returns to Ireland, cons and marries a rich widow and becomes Barry Lyndon. His downfall, when it comes, is not only inevitable but welcome because, rumbustious fun as the novel undoubtedly is, the incessant boasting and name-dropping eventually become somewhat tiresome.
18 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Like De Foe, Thackeray recorded the "autobiography" of his hero, Barry Lyndon, Irish adventurer, originally Barry Redmond, who became a chance soldier in the British and Prussian armies during the Seven Years War (1756-1763). After his adventures as a soldier and a spy, he becomes a professional gambler and faithful companion of the Chevalier de Balibari. Together they cheat the most famous courts of Europe with their "skill" at cards and build up a substantial fortune to add to their fame. The gambler gives up his days of adventure-seeking after conveniently "falling in love" with the Countess of Lyndon just after her extremely wealthy husband dies. His downfall comes soon after.
Highly recommended for the historical novel lover.
Highly recommended for the historical novel lover.
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is an extremely entertaining and well written book in which the narrator's unreliability is skilfully and amusingly revealed as he recounts his adventures in eighteenth century Europe; the influences of which are clear in a number of later works. Thackeray himself re-employs many tropes in his later novels (the rise through society of a penniless chancer, the man-of-the-world uncle) that first turned up in the richly sardonic 'memoir' of Redmond Barry. And, more recently, the structure and tone of this novel must surely have been an influence on George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman series.
Look out also for an amusing and contemporarily relevant passage in which Thackeray denounces those who work in the City of London as 'gamesters'.
Look out also for an amusing and contemporarily relevant passage in which Thackeray denounces those who work in the City of London as 'gamesters'.
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