The Correspondence and Journals of the Thackeray Family

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Editor: John Aplin

The Pickering Masters

Marking the bicentenary of the birth of William Makepeace Thackeray in 1811, this five-volume critical edition represents the most substantial collection of unpublished material relating to the novelist and his gifted family. Drawing on just over 1,300 letters in public collections, as well as on privately-owned documents, this project presents a wealth of unknown or underused sources that demand scholarly attention.

Whilst complementing the already published volumes of Thackeray’s letters, this important work opens up research on the complex and often troubled dynamics within the family, providing evidence for a narrative that suggests elements of psychological disorder, less than orthodox relationships and transgenerational marriage.

Of particular importance in revealing Thackeray’s professional life are the substantial collection of rediscovered letters sent by George Smith to the novelist relating to The Cornhill Magazine, of which Smith was founder-publisher and Thackeray the first editor. They throw new light upon the working relationship between the two men in their day-to-day planning for the magazine, and represent the largest surviving series of letters to Thackeray from a single correspondent.

As well as many intimate family letters, including those between Thackeray’s daughters, also represented are the extensive communications between his elder daughter Anne – herself an author – and many key artistic and literary figures of the time, including Alfred, Lord Tennyson, George Frederic Watts, John Ruskin, Robert Browning, George Smith, Leslie Stephen, Kate Perugini, Julia Margaret Cameron, John Everett Millais, Lord Frederic Leighton, Fanny Kemble, Henry James, J M Barrie, Margaret Oliphant, Algernon Charles Swinburne, George Meredith, Rhoda Broughton, George du Maurier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Andrew Lang, Augustine Birrell and Virginia Woolf.

• Many previously unpublished family papers
• New insights afforded into the Thackeray family and their circle
• Includes letters by Thackeray’s wife, Isabella
• Significant amounts of uniquely valuable material from private collections and smaller resources not previously studied in context
• Consolidated index in final volume

Sample pages

• Sample letters from 1876–8 including Margaret Oliphant, John Ruskin, Alfred Lord Tennyson and Lord Houghton

Contents

Volume 1
General Introduction
Journal Pages and Two Letters of Richmond Thackeray
The Letters of Anne Carmichael-Smyth
The Letters of George Murray Smith to William Makepeace Thackeray

Volume 2
The Journal of Anne Thackeray Ritchie
Selected Correspondence of the Thackeray Family

Volume 3
Selected Correspondence, Continued

Volume 4
Selected Correspondence, Continued

Volume 5
Selected Correspondence, Continued
Indexes

Reviews

'Aplin must be congratulated on having so painstakingly brought so much enlightening and original material into the public arena ... he may be said to have done for the extended Thackeray family what Gordon N Ray and Edgar Harden did for Thackeray's papers half a century ago.'
– Hilary Newman, Virginia Woolf Bulletin

'will be immensely valuable'
– Charlotte Mitchell, Times Literary Supplement (read the full review here)

'a major contribution to Thackeray scholarship, packed with fresh material and incisive content'
– Edward Short, The Weekly Standard

'these volumes are a treasure trove of new primary material ... Aplin’s collection is a valuable addition to the Thackeray archive'
– Judith Fisher, Victorian Literature and Culture

Related titles

• Lives of Victorian Literary Figures, Part V : Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Wilkie Collins and William Thackeray by their contemporaries
• The Journals of Thomas Babington Macaulay
• The Selected Works of Margaret Oliphant
• The Uncollected Letters of Algernon Charles Swinburne

Leaflets

• Thackeray: colour leaflet

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