English journalist, novelist, famous for his novel Vanity Fair (1847-48), a tale of two middle-class London families. Most of Thackeray's major novels were published as monthly serials. Thackeray studied in a satirical and moralistic light upper- and middle-class English life – he was once seen as the equal of his contemporary Dickens, or even as his superior.

"This I set as a positive truth. A woman with fair opportunities, and without a positive hump, may marry whom she likes." (from Vanity Fair)

William Makepeace Thackeray was born in Calcutta, India, the only son of Richmond Thackeray, a Collector in the East Indian Company's service. After his father died he was sent to home to England. He was educated at Charterhouse and at Trinity College, Cambridge. Thackeray abandoned his studies without taking a degree, having lost some of his inheritance of twenty thousand pounds through gambling. In the beginning of the 1830s he visited Germany, where he met Goethe.

During 1831-33 Thackeray studied law at the Middle Temple, London, but had little enthusiasm to continue his studies. In 1833 he brought with a large heritage the National Standard, but lost his fortune a year later in the Indian bank failures and other bad investments. According to an anecdote, Thackeray offered to undertake the task of illustrating Dickens's Pickwick Papers in 1836, but the author himself found Thackeray's drawings unsuitable. 

After art studies in Paris, Thackeray returned in 1837 to London and started his career as a hard working journalist. Often he used absurd pen names such as George Savage Fitz-Boodle, Michael Angelo Titmarsh, Théophile Wagstaff, and C.J. Yellowplush, Esq. Like Dickens, he was a staunch opponent of the death penalty. When  François Benjamin Courvoisier was hanged for the murder of  Lord William Russell, Thackeray was there, among the crowd with Dickens, witnessing it. His impressions he recorded in the essay 'Going to See a Man Hanged' (1840). Thackeray noted that "the mob was extraordinarily gentle and good-humoured" and confessed that "I feel myself ashamed and degraded at the brutal curiosity which took me to that brutal sight; and that I pray to Almighty God to cause this disgraceful sin to pass from among us, and to cleanse our land of blood."

In 1836 Thackeray married a poor Irish girl, Isabella Shawe; they had three daughters. Their first child, Anne Thackeray Ritchie (1837-1919), became a writer – her impressionistic texts impressed Virginia Woolf, who drew a portrait of her in Night and Day (1919) as 'Mrs Hilbery.' Ritchie (1837-1919) published several novels, and contributed to an 1898-99 edition of her father's works. A prominent intellectual figure of her time and well-acquainted with a number of the great names of British literature, she also wrote memoirs of her contemporaries, including Tennyson (1809-1892) and the critic and art historian John Ruskin (1819-1900).

Thackeray began to contribute regularly to Fraser's Magazine, Morning Chronicle, New Monthly Magazine and The Times. His writings attracted first attention in Punch, where he satirized English snobbery. These sketches reappeared in 1848 as The Book of Snobs, in which he stated that "he who meanly admires mean things is a Snob."

In 1840 Isabella Thackeray suffered a mental breakdown, from which she never recovered, through she survived Thackeray by thirty years. The author was forced to send his children to France to his mother. The children returned to England in 1846 to live with him.

Already in his first novel, Catherine (1839), originally written for Fraser's Magazine, Thackeray broke with the literary conventions of his day: "The characters of the tale ARE immoral, and no doubt of it; but the writer humbly hopes the end is not so. The public was, in our notion, dosed and poisoned by the prevailing style of literary practice, and it was necessary to administer some medicine that would produce a wholesome nausea, and afterwards bring about a more healthy habit."

The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844), portrayed an adventurer, opportunist, and gambler, who serves in the Seven Years War, first under the English flag and then in the Prussian army, gains wealth, and eventually is punished for his imperfections. "Suppose in a game of life – and it is but a twopenny game after all – you are equally eager of winning," Thackeray wrote much later in 'Autour de mon Chapeau' (1863). "Shall you be ashamed of your ambition, or glory in it?"

In Vanity Fair , set at the time of the Napoleonic wars, Thackeray created one of the most fascinating immoral female characters, Becky Sharp, who manages to avoid the fate of Barry Lyndon: "I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year." (from Vanity Fair) The book brought Thackeray prosperity and made him an established author and popular lecturer in Europe and in the United States.

Vanity Fair was sub-titled 'A Novel without a Hero'. "Everybody in Vanity Fair must have remarked how well those live who are comfortably and thoroughly in debt; how they deny themselves nothing; how jolly and easy they are in their minds." The vast satirical panorama of a materialistic society centers on Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley, good-natured but 'silly.' They are two boarding-school friends, whose destinies are contrasted. Clever and ambitious Becky is born into poverty as the daughter of a penniless artist. Her plans to marry Amelia's brother Joseph fail. She marries Rowdon Crawley, but he is disinherited. Becky manages to live at the height of fashion through the patronage of Lord Steyne. When her husband discovers the truth, he departs to become the governor of Coventry Island. Becky is ostracized and she moves to the Continent. In the meantime Amelia's stockbroker father is ruined. Amelia is loved by William Dobbin but she marries George Osborne – he dies in the battle of Waterloo. Amelia's son is left into the care of his grandfather, who dies and leaves him a fortune. Amelia travels in the Continent with his brother and they meet Becky. Dobbin has returned from India and disapproves Amelia's kindness to Becky. Older and disillusioned, Dobbin and Amelia can marry. Becky regains her hold over Joseph, who dies in suspicious circumstances. Becky's husband Rowdon dies, and Becky ends the novel in the guise of a pious widow. (See also: Anthony Trollope, Michael Innes)

Thackeray's increasing love for Jane Brookfield, the wife of an old Cambridge friend, led to a rupture in their friendship. The History of Henry Esmond, Esq., appeared in three volumes in 1852, and reflected the melancholic period in the life of the author. By the end of his career, Thackeray's disillusionment with contemporary culture seems to have deepened. In The Adventures of Philip (1862) the protagonist, Philip, is out of place in a world that does not accommodate his vision of masculinity.

Thackeray said that he couldn't start a novel until he knew every aspect of his characters. He called Victorian times "if not the most moral, certainly the most squeamish." Once, as an editor, he rejected an Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem because it employed the word harlot. Thackeray became in 1860 the first editor of the Cornhill Magazine, for which he wrote his Roundabout Papers, Lovel the Widower, The Adventures of Philip and the unfinished Denis Duval. Less successful Thackeray was with his attempt to stand for Parliament. His contacts with friendly rival Charles Dickens  ended in a quarrel, but their daughters continued to be friends. Thackeray died suddenly on Christams Eve 1863. Just before his death he he had reconciled with Dickens.

Thackeray was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery. His bust at the Westminster Abbey was made by the Italian sculptor Marachetti. The poet's daughter was not satisfied with the work and let another sculptor to modify her father's stone sideburns until they were the right length.

For further reading: Chapters from some Memoirs by Anne Thackeray Ritchie (1894); Thackeray: The Uses of Adversity by Gordon Ray (1955); Thackeray: The Age of Wisdom by Gordon Ray (1958); The Exposure of Luxury by Barbara Nathan Hardy (1972); Prodigal Genius by John Carey (1977); Thackeray's Canvass of Humanity by Robert A. Colby (1979): The Idea of the Gentleman in the Victorian Novel by Robin Gilmour (1981); Reading Thackeray by Michael Lund (1988); Thackeray's Cultural Frame of Reference by Rowland McMaster (1991); Thackeray and Slavery by Deborah A. Thomas (1993); Thackeray and Women by Micael M. Clarke (1997)

Selected works:

• The Yellowplush Papers, 1838
• Catherine, 1839-40
• The Paris Sketchbook, 1840
• Essay on the Genius of George Cruikshank, 1840 (with illustrations of his works)
• The History of Samuel Titmarsh and the Great Hoggarty Diamond, 1841
  - Samuel Titmarsh eli tarina isosta Hoggartyn timantista (suomentanut Heikki Impivaara, 1907)
• The Irish Sketchbook, 1843 (as M.A. Titmarsh)
• The Luck of Barry Lyndon, 1844 (rev. in 1856 as The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, esq.)
  - film 1975, dir. by Stanley Kubrick, starring Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Hardy Kruger. (Kubrick wanted to recreate on screen the look of 18th-century paintings and so set out to film the movie without any artifical lighting at all.)
• Notes of a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo, 1846 (as M.A. Titmarsh)
• Mrs. Perkins’s Ball, 1847
• The Book of Snobs, 1848
• Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero, 1847-48
  - Turhuuden turuilla 1-2 (suom. Aino Tuomikoski, 1955-1956)
  - films: 1911, dir. Charles Kent, starring Helen Gardner as Becky Sharp; 1915, dir. Charles Brabin and Eugene Nowland, starring Minnie Maddern Fiske and Shirley Mason; 1922, dir. W. Courtney Rowden, starring Cosmo Kyrle Bellew as Becky Sharp; 1923, dir.  Hugo Ballin, starring Mabel Ballin; 1932, dir. Chester M. Franklin, starring Myrna Loy; 1935, Becky Sharp, dir.  Rouben Mamoulian, starring Miriam Hopkins, Cedric Hardwicke, Frances Dee; 2004, dir. Mira Nair, starring Reese Witherspoon, James Purefoy, Eileen Atkins, Gabriel Byrne
• "Ourn Street", 1848 (as M.A. Titmarsh)
• The History of Pendennis, His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy, 1848-50
• Doctor Birch and his Young Friends, 1849 (as M. A. Titmarsh)
• The Kickleburys on the Rhine, 1850
• Rebecca and Rowena: A Romance upon Romance, 1850 (as M. A. Titmarsh)
• The English Humourists of the 18th Century, 1851
• The Confessions of Fitz-Boodle; and, Some Passages in the Life of Major Gahagan, 1852
• Men’s Wives, 1852
• The History of Henry Esmond, Esq., 1852 
  - Henry Esmondin tarina hänen itsensä kertomana (suom. Martta Räsänen, 1923)
• The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family, 1853-55
• The Rose and the Ring, or, The History of Prince Giglio and Prince Bulbo. A Fire-Side Pantomime for Great and Small Children, 1855
  - films: 1979 (animation). prod. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), dir.  Patricia Martin and Lotte Reiniger, Pierscien i róza, 1987, prod. Zespól Filmowy "Kadr" (Polans), dir. Jerzy Gruza, starring Katarzyna Figura, Stefan Kazuro, Katarzyna Cygan, Zbigniew Zamachowski
• Miscellanies, 1855-57 (4 vols.)
• The Virginians: A Tale of the Last Century, 1857-59
• Four Georges, 1860
• Lovel the Widower, 1860
• Poems and Essays, 1860
• The Adventures of Philip on his Way Through the World, 1862
• Roundabout Papers, 1860-63 (reprinted from the Cornhill magazine)
• Denis Duval, 1864
• The Works of William Makepeace Thackeray, 1869 (22 vols.)
• The Orphan of Pimlico and Other Sketches, Fragments and Drawings, 1876 (with notes by Anne Isabella Thackeray)
• The Complete Poems of W. M. Thackeray, 1886
• A Collection of Letters of Thackeray, 1847-1855, 1887 (edited by Jane Octavia Brookfield)
• Thackeray’s Complete Works, 1888 (Sterling ed.)
• The Works of William Makepeace Thackeray, 1898-1899 (13 vols.,  with biographical introductions by his daughter, Anne Ritchie)
• Stray Papers, by William Makepeace Thackeray; Being Stories, Reviews, Verses, and Sketches (1821-1847), 1901 (ed., with an introduction and notes by Lewis Melville)
• Contributions to Punch etc., 1903 (edited by Walter Jerrold, with illustrations by Charles E. Brock)
• The Works of William Makepeace Thackeray, 1903-04 (32 vols., Kensington ed.)
• The Complete Works of William Makepeace Thackeray, 1904 (30 vols., with introd. by William P. Trent and John Bell Henneman)
• The Letters and Private Papers of William Makepeace Thackeray, 1945-46 (4 vols., collected and edited by  Gordon N. Ray)
• The Illustrations of William Makepeace Thackeray, 1979 (edited by John Buchanan-Brown)
• Drawn from Life: The Journalism of William Makepeace Thackeray, 1984 (with drawings by the author; selected, edited, and with an introduction by Margaret Forster)
• The Letters and Private Papers of William Makepeace Thackeray, 1994 (2 vols, edited by Edgar F. Harden)