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William Makepeace Thackeray |
Thackeray was born in Calcutta, India. His parents returned to England in 1817 and Thackeray was educated at Charterhouse and Trinity College, Cambridge. However, Thackeray became addicted to gambling and left Cambridge in 1830 without a degree and heavily in debt.
During 1831-33 Thackeray studied law at the Middle Temple, London. In 1833 he brought with a large heritage the National Standard, but lost his fortune a year later in other bad investments. At first Thackeray tried to make a living as a painter but after this ended in failure he turned to journalism. Thackeray moved to Paris where he became the French correspondent for the radical newspaper, The Constitutional. When The Constitutional ceased publication, Thackeray moved back to England and began contributing articles to a wide variety of newspapers and journals, including The Times, The Morning Chronicle, Fraser's Magazine and Punch Magazine.
Vanity Fair brought Thackeray prosperity and made him established writer and popular lecturer in Europe and in the United States. Less successful Thackeray was with his attempt to stand for Parliament, and his contacts with friendly rival Charles Dickens ended in a quarrel.
Most of Thackeray's major novels were published as monthly serials. In 1860 he became the first editor of the Cornhill Magazine, where several of his later works appeared. Although a successful novelist, Thackeray continued to write articles for journals such as Punch Magazine. In 1859 he became editor of the Cornhill Magazine, a monthly literary journal published by George Smith. William Makepeace Thackeray died in 1863.
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