The History of Pendennis
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Product Description
Product Description
Written immediately after Vanity Fair, Pendennis has a similar atmosphere of brooding disillusion, tempered by the most jovial of wits. But here Thackeray plunders his own past to create the character of Pendennis and the world in which he lives: from miserable schoolboy to striving journalist, from carefree Oxbridge to the high (and low) life of London. The result is a superbly panoramic blend of people, action and background. The true ebb and flow of life is caught and the credibility of Pen, his worldly uncle, the Major, and many of the other characters, extends far beyond the pages of the novel. Held together by Thackeray's flowing, confident prose, with its conversational ease of tone, Pendennis is as rich a portrait of England in the 1830s and 40s as it is a thorough and thoroughly entertaining self-portrait.
About the Author
William Makepeace Thackeray was born in Calcutta in 1811, but sent to England at the age of six. He was educated at Charterhouse and at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1833 he settled in Paris, after a major financial loss, and tried a career as a painter. It was here he met nineteen-year-old Isabella Shawe, upon whom he based many of his virtuous but weak heroines, and whom he married in 1836. A year later they settled in London, where Thackeray turned seriously to journalism.
His writing for periodicals included The Yellowplush Correspondence, which appeared first in Fraser's Magazine and then in 1841 in book form. Around this time personal and domestic pressures caused the already helpless Isabella to subside into a state of complete and permanent mental collapse and the subsequent breakdown of the marriage formed a central part of Thackeray's consciousness. His early work centred around rogues and villains, most famously in The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844; revised as The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq. in 1856), and in his masterpiece, Vanity Fair, which appeared in monthly parts in 1847-8 and which most clearly reveals his socially satirical edge. The Book of Snobs, which originally appeared as a series in Punch, also attacks Victorian society with vicious wit. Thackeray's later novels include The History of Pendennis, (1848-50); The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. (1852); The Newcomes (1853-5); The Virginians, (1857-9), which is a sequel to Henry Esmond; and The Adventures of Philip (1860-62). He also wrote a series of lectures, The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century (1853), and numerous reviews, articles and sketches, usually in the comic vein. From 1860 to 1862 he also edited the Cornhill magazine. Thackeray died suddenly on Christmas Eve, 1863.
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First Sentence
SINCE that fatal but delightful night in Grosvenor-place, Mr. Harry Foker's heart had been in such a state of agitation as you would hardly have thought so great a philosopher could endure. Read the first page
Front Cover | Table of Contents | Excerpt
SINCE that fatal but delightful night in Grosvenor-place, Mr. Harry Foker's heart had been in such a state of agitation as you would hardly have thought so great a philosopher could endure. Read the first page
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
I can see why "Pendennis" is under-reviewed here: it's not Thackeray's greatest work. But it is intriguing. I've read this book a couple of times now, and, as I always find with classic literature, you get something different out of it depending on your age when you read it. This time round I felt like I was sitting very near Thackeray, somewhere in the shadows of a pub, a little closer to him in age than to his hero and heroine, as he tosses off chapter after chapter, writing sometimes about himself, with great humour and modest self-deprecation, and sometimes about others, with widely varying degrees of success. My expressions as I hear his thoughts are surprise, shock, laughter, dismay, sometimes even contempt.
The story is, I believe, a thinly veiled story of his own life as an arrogant and foolish young tearaway, his entry into the literary world, his wasting of other people's money and care. It's penitent and proud, cruel and sentimental, clever and foolish all at the same time.
I always loved that Thackeray's heroines were considerably more flawed, likeable creations than Dickens' ludicrously wilting small-footed, cherry-mouthed crybabies. So, was Thackeray writing to please a Dickens-trained audience when he makes near-saints out of Helen, Arthur's clinging mother, and Laura, his "sister"? Or was it something a little more Freudian?
Parts of the book really can be quite hard to read with a modern eye. The very helpful introduction sets the story in context and, in particular, provides suggested reasons for Thackeray's particularly ill-natured savagery on the subject of the Irish. His Irish characters are almost uniformly either drunken or stupid. I understand that some of these characters are taken from real life people who, I'm sure, were delighted to be flayed in this very public way.
I feel Thackeray's snobbery is only superficially "satirical". Despite his calling Arthur arrogant and foolish, still in believing that poor Smirke's attachment to his mother is out of the question; that his marriage to his first love, "The Fotheringay", would have made him ridiculous; that being (literally!) patronised by the toffs was desirable - you just can't escape the feeling that the author in fact agrees. The cap is being doffed: he may be smiling wryly, but it's being doffed all the same. In the context of the times in which he wrote, I suppose the tone is not altogether surprising - but not altogether likeable. Dickens got into hot water with his Jewish friends over his depiction of Fagin in "Oliver Twist"; and people of African origin were practically beneath contemplation to such literary men (which is why their inclusion in modern historical dramas causes comfy provincial white people such annoyance! Hooray!). Of course, when authors wanted to sound all clever and bitter they would use ugly words like "Hottentot".
Past all this, the more contemplative me still finds plenty to like in this book. The writer's brilliance is in creating a whole world: his rapid brush strokes and often cruel insight allow him to create a huge cast of characters and an intense sense of place and time without apparent effort. But when it comes to the great romance of the novel, Arthur's not it. I'm with Lady Rockminster: I, too, should have preferred Bluebeard, perhaps without his prejudices.
The story is, I believe, a thinly veiled story of his own life as an arrogant and foolish young tearaway, his entry into the literary world, his wasting of other people's money and care. It's penitent and proud, cruel and sentimental, clever and foolish all at the same time.
I always loved that Thackeray's heroines were considerably more flawed, likeable creations than Dickens' ludicrously wilting small-footed, cherry-mouthed crybabies. So, was Thackeray writing to please a Dickens-trained audience when he makes near-saints out of Helen, Arthur's clinging mother, and Laura, his "sister"? Or was it something a little more Freudian?
Parts of the book really can be quite hard to read with a modern eye. The very helpful introduction sets the story in context and, in particular, provides suggested reasons for Thackeray's particularly ill-natured savagery on the subject of the Irish. His Irish characters are almost uniformly either drunken or stupid. I understand that some of these characters are taken from real life people who, I'm sure, were delighted to be flayed in this very public way.
I feel Thackeray's snobbery is only superficially "satirical". Despite his calling Arthur arrogant and foolish, still in believing that poor Smirke's attachment to his mother is out of the question; that his marriage to his first love, "The Fotheringay", would have made him ridiculous; that being (literally!) patronised by the toffs was desirable - you just can't escape the feeling that the author in fact agrees. The cap is being doffed: he may be smiling wryly, but it's being doffed all the same. In the context of the times in which he wrote, I suppose the tone is not altogether surprising - but not altogether likeable. Dickens got into hot water with his Jewish friends over his depiction of Fagin in "Oliver Twist"; and people of African origin were practically beneath contemplation to such literary men (which is why their inclusion in modern historical dramas causes comfy provincial white people such annoyance! Hooray!). Of course, when authors wanted to sound all clever and bitter they would use ugly words like "Hottentot".
Past all this, the more contemplative me still finds plenty to like in this book. The writer's brilliance is in creating a whole world: his rapid brush strokes and often cruel insight allow him to create a huge cast of characters and an intense sense of place and time without apparent effort. But when it comes to the great romance of the novel, Arthur's not it. I'm with Lady Rockminster: I, too, should have preferred Bluebeard, perhaps without his prejudices.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This novel follows what might almost be the standard pattern for a mid 19th century novel. It never rises to the heights of Dickens or Trollope at his best. Nor, indeed, is it as good as Thackeray's own best work Vanity Fair. But it is - for all its faults - eminently readable and contains a couple of interesting characters.
The eponymous hero is however not among these being essentially a parasitical drip who the author fails to convince us is worth the affection and sacrifice lavished on him throughout, not least by his mother and 'sister'. He is a bland English Raskalnikov with not the smallest amount of existentialist angst about him. Far more interesting is his uncle, a man who whilst introduced by Thackeray as a Pall Mall dandy and society hanger-on, actually demonstrates shrewd judgement and political skills which he diligently applies in the service of the advancement of his unworthy nephew. The scene in which he routs a blackmailing servant is especially well done.
The female characters are all so hopeless (except for Fanny and Blanche, who in combination rather resemble Becky Sharp) that one wonders whether Thackeray had ever met any women prior to writing it. If he did then they must have been a severe disappointment to him compared to these ridiculously idealised ciphers. Even the actress that is Pendennis's youthful folie d'amour is as pure as the driven snow.
The author takes a self-indulgent digression into writing about writers, but after a quite nice description of simultaneous parties being given by rival publishers gets bored with that and the hero goes back to doing what he does best: nothing much. Ironically, given that I am reviewing this somewhat critically, one of the best passages of prose in the book is given over to a still very relevant description of the real value of literary critics. He also creates I would suggest, in the person of Mr Bludyer, the archetype for the members of Amazon's own Vine Voice review programme.
So, overall it's a pretty bog-standard Victorian novel about the struggles (I use the term loosely) of one of the privileged classes with some nice writing, a bloodless hero, but sufficient other areas of interest to make it worth reading.
The eponymous hero is however not among these being essentially a parasitical drip who the author fails to convince us is worth the affection and sacrifice lavished on him throughout, not least by his mother and 'sister'. He is a bland English Raskalnikov with not the smallest amount of existentialist angst about him. Far more interesting is his uncle, a man who whilst introduced by Thackeray as a Pall Mall dandy and society hanger-on, actually demonstrates shrewd judgement and political skills which he diligently applies in the service of the advancement of his unworthy nephew. The scene in which he routs a blackmailing servant is especially well done.
The female characters are all so hopeless (except for Fanny and Blanche, who in combination rather resemble Becky Sharp) that one wonders whether Thackeray had ever met any women prior to writing it. If he did then they must have been a severe disappointment to him compared to these ridiculously idealised ciphers. Even the actress that is Pendennis's youthful folie d'amour is as pure as the driven snow.
The author takes a self-indulgent digression into writing about writers, but after a quite nice description of simultaneous parties being given by rival publishers gets bored with that and the hero goes back to doing what he does best: nothing much. Ironically, given that I am reviewing this somewhat critically, one of the best passages of prose in the book is given over to a still very relevant description of the real value of literary critics. He also creates I would suggest, in the person of Mr Bludyer, the archetype for the members of Amazon's own Vine Voice review programme.
So, overall it's a pretty bog-standard Victorian novel about the struggles (I use the term loosely) of one of the privileged classes with some nice writing, a bloodless hero, but sufficient other areas of interest to make it worth reading.
6 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I read this book about 7-8 years ago after I read Vanity Fair. I found it to be a very entertaining book about a foolish young man. This foolish young man goes through several adventures as can be deduced from the title, he neglects his true friends and family because thinks himself of an upper class than them. But in the end he learns the value of true friendship. Yes his greatest enemy is himself!!!
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