William Makepeace Thackeray

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) was an English novelist born in Calcutta, sent home to school at five, and left at twenty-one with a fortune he lost within a few years through gambling and failed newspapers. He supported himself by journalism, much of it for Punch, under a string of comic pseudonyms, and published The Luck of Barry Lyndon in 1844 before Vanity Fair, serialized in 1847 and 1848, made his name. Pendennis, Henry Esmond and The Newcomes followed, and he was the first editor of the Cornhill Magazine. His wife became incurably insane after the birth of their third daughter, and he raised the children alone.