W. M. Thackeray (1811-63)

English novelist and poet. William Makepeace Thackeray was born in Calcutta, India, and was sent to England when he was five. He is famous as a satirist who wrote The Book of Snobs (1847), Vanity Fair (1848) and other works, but the reason he left Trinity College, Cambridge in less than one year, was that he had been devoting himself to writing poetry. Though it is reported that he endured all sorts of suffering, such as his father’s death in his infancy and his wife’s lunacy, his poetry is full of humour, which he believed to be essential for life. (M. M.)