Chapter 1

In Kolkata on July 18, 1811, East India Company officer Richmond Thackeray and his wife Anne welcomed their first child, William Makepeace Thackeray. Richmond died of fever in 1815; in 1817 Anne married Captain Henry Carmichael-Smyth, a man with whom she had fallen in love as a teenager, but whom her parents felt would make an unsuitable match.

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- Young Thackeray was sent to England in 1816 to begin his schooling. He attended a series of schools and was unhappy at all of them. Of his first, he later wrote, “A school of which our deluded parents had heard a favourable report, but which was governed by a horrible little tyrant, who made our young lives so miserable that I remember kneeling by my little bed of a night, and saying, ‘Pray God, may I dream of my mother!’” Despite frequent unhappiness, Thackeray was popular with his classmates. Witty and bright, he also had a strong gift for caricature.
  
  In 1822, Thackeray entered the prestigious Charterhouse School, for which he was perhaps not academically well-prepared. While his social popularity continued, he was short-sighted, making him unable to join many of the physical activities the other boys enjoyed. He was punished often for his laziness and poor behavior. Thackeray’s experiences at school, positive and negative, provided rich material for his writing, and scenes from his schooldays would make their way into several of his works.
  
  After finishing at Charterhouse, he began to prepare for university, rigorously making up for the faults of his earlier education. In February 1829, Thackeray entered Trinity College, Cambridge. Although he strived to be an honors student, he also enjoyed socializing with his literary-minded classmates, hosting and attending popular “wine parties,” and gambling frequently. Dissatisfied by his low marks, he left Cambridge after the Easter term of 1830. He later wrote, “I should like to know...how much ruin is caused by that accursed system, which is called in England ‘the education of a gentleman’. Go, my son, to a public school, that ‘world in miniature’; learn to ‘fight for yourself’ against the time when your real struggles shall begin...”

In this section

	George Chinnery. Anne Becher Thackeray, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Richmond Thackeray. ca. 1813-1814.	Juvenile sketch, undated.

	Thackeray’s Horace, used at Charterhouse (London: Whittaker, et al, 1822)	J. Deville. Bust of Thackeray as a child, ca. 1822.

	“First Term” and “Second Term” from Thackeray’s Etchings…while at Cambridge (London: Sotheran, 1878)	The Snob and The Gownsman.(Cambridge: W.H. Smith, 1829-1830).

	Thackeray writes “Stanzas to Mary,” undated.	Thackeray to his mother, 14 December 1830.

	“Prepare your mind to undergo a great shock,” Thackeray to James Carmichael-Smyth, [29 November] 1832.	Thackeray’s illustrations in Edward FitzGerald’s copy of Undine. (London: undated.)