The Inheritance of Genius: A Thackeray Family Biography, 1798-1875 - Softcover

Inheritance of Genius

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Now remembered principally for one novel, Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray was one of the most popular authors of his time and an influential figure in London literary society during the mid-Victorian period. Although he enjoyed the club-centred, bachelor world which he made familiar in his fiction, he was essentially a private, family man. When his wife's impaired mental health made it necessary to place her in specialised care he coped with this permanent sadness by forging a strong bond with his two daughters. They lived with him as his companions until his death, which affected them profoundly.Working with letters, journals, not Elektronisches Buch and diaries, many of which have not previously been published, and with papers still held privately by current family members, John Aplin reintroduces us to Thackeray as the paterfamilias of an intimate circle of mother, wife and daughters that defined his life and fiction. Weaving his way through successive generations of the Thackeray family, Aplin details not only the author's life, but devotes equal care to following his two daughters, Annie and Minny, who remained at the centre of cosmopolitan and literary society after their father's death. Minny became the wife of Leslie Stephen (later the father of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell), a marriage curtailed by her own premature death, aged thirty-five. Annie, who had been cautioned by Thackeray from rushing too early into print, would herself emerge as a successful novelist, though one always content to live within her father's shadow. This volume provides a unique account of the Thackeray women - mother, wife and daughters - and their place in the novelist's life. More nuanced portraits than have hitherto been available emerge, including of Thackeray's mother, too readily sidelined as a religious fanatic despite the author's reliance upon her during the early years of his daughters' upbringing. Aplin presents the first wholly new appraisal of Thackeray's life and legacy through the lens that truly defined him - his family. John Aplin was formerly Head of the Department of Performing Arts at Brunel University. Now an independent researcher and writer, he has been working on the Thackeray family papers for some years. The companion volume to The Inheritance of Genius, entitled Memory and Legacy, is due for publication in 2010 by The Lutterworth Press, and will complete the fullest account yet written of the life of Thackeray's elder daughter. He has also edited the five-volume Correspondence and Journals of the Thackeray Family for Pickering & Chatto, an appropriate resource to mark the bicentenary of Thackeray's birth in 2011. Artikel-Nr. 9780718892241

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