This book conveys Thackeray's development as a book reviewer, journalist, art exhibition critic, short-story writer, satirical essayist and novelist a development that culminates in the creation of his masterpiece, Vanity Fair one of the glories of English imaginative writing. Articulating the connections between these vigorous and lively youthful works, and the growth of Thackeray as an increasingly profound participant observer, Harden reveals the exuberant imaginative growth and deepening understanding of a supremely perceptive critic of human social life.Preface List of Abbreviations Chapters 1-7 Afterword Notes IndexEDGAR F. HARDEN received the AB degree from Princeton University and the AM and PhD degrees from Harvard University. Since 1966 he has taught at Simon Fraser University, where he is Professor of English. He has published on Browning, Trollope, and especially Thackeray in journals that include Victorian Poetry, PMLA, Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Huntington Library Quarterly, Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, and Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America. He is also the author of The Emergence of Thackeray's Serial Fiction, Thackeray's English Humourists and Four Georges, and Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero: A Critical Study, and he has edited Thackeray's Henry Esmond, Annotations for the Selected Works of W. Thackeray. A Supplement, A Checklist of Contributions by William Thackeray to Newspapers, Periodicals, Books, and Serial Part Issues, 1828-1864, and Selected Letters of William Makepeace Thackeray. He has been awarded fellowships and research grants by the Canada Council, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.