A selective list of literary criticism for Victorian novelist William Thackeray, favoring signed articles by recognized scholars, articles published in reviewed sources, and web sites that adhere to the MLA Guidelines for Authors of Web Sites
Main Page | 19th-Century Novel | 19th-Century Literature | About Literaryhistory.com
Bruce, Donald. "Thackeray's memorials of defeat," in Contemporary Review, March, 1993
Bruce, Donald. "Thackeray the sentimental sceptic," in Contemporary Review, June, 1993
Byerly, Alison. "Effortless Art: The Sketch in Nineteenth-Century Painting and Literature." On the sketches of Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray. In Criticism, Summer, 1999
Harden, Edgar, ed. A review of Selected Letters of William Makepeace Thackeray, in Contemporary Review, April, 1995 reviewed by Richard Mullen
Litvak, Joseph. Kiss me, stupid: Sophistication, sexuality, and Vanity Fair." Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Winter 1996
Lund, Michael. Publisher's blurb for Reading Thackeray (Wayne State Univ. Press, 1988) which focuses on the serial publication of Thackeray's novels and how serialization influenced Victorian understanding of the texts
McCuskey, Brian. Fetishizing the flunkey: Thackeray and the uses of deviance, in Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Summer 1999
Mullen, Alexandra. "Vanity Fair and vexation of spirit." "Thackeray invented the modern snob," notes Mullen. In The Hudson Review, Winter 2002
Phelan, J. A review of Narrative as Rhetoric: Technique, Audiences, Ethics, Ideology (Ohio State Univ, Press, 1996), which includes essays on Vanity Fair, Virginia Woolf's The Waves, and Toni Morrison's Beloved. Reviewed in Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Fall 1996 by Herman, David
Pearson, Richard. An introduction to William Makepeace Thackeray from the Literary Encyclopedia, 28 October 2000. On Vanity Fair
The Victorian Web has good essays on Thackeray's writing techniques, themes, biography, and the Victorian background.
Older criticism covers Thackeray's major and minor works and a biography, from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907-21)
"Kubrick, Thackeray and the memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq." On filmmaker Stanley Kubrick's version of Thackeray's novel. In Literature Film Quarterly, 2001 by Hesling, Willem
"A flat sharp," on the film version of Vanity Fair starring Reese Witherspoon. National Review, Sept 27, 2004 by Jonathan Foreman
A secondary bibliography for William Makepeace Thackeray, from Dr. Jay Clayton, Vanderbilt Univ.
A guide to research resources from the Victoria discussion list for Victorian Studies
A review of Vanity Fair from the Atlantic Monthly in 1865 (taken offline)
A feature page on Victorian times, from the British Broadcasting Company, contains much interesting social history written especially for the site and is a good introduction to the period (but taken offline, common with BBC pages)
Main Page | 19th-Century Novel | 19th-Century Literature | About Literaryhistory.com
1998-2010 by Jan Pridmore