Catherine Peters's cosmically titled book is a popular biography. It is also the third popular biography of Thackeray we have had in the last nine years, taking its place alongside Anne Monsarrat's Thackeray: Uneasy Victorian (1980) and Margaret Forster's sprightly 'autobiography', Thackeray: Memoirs of a Victorian Gentleman (1978). (Rather meanly, Peters leaves both competitors out of her 'Select Bibliography'.) All three are, self-confessedly, dwarfed by the late Gordon Ray's authoritative two-volume biography, Thackeray, The Uses of Adversity (1955) and Thackeray, The Age of Wisdom (1958).

LRB 23 April 1987 | PDF Download