Books with author William Makepeace]

How is this book unique?Font adjustments & biography includedUnabridged (100% Original content)IllustratedAbout The History of Henry Esmond by William Makepeace ThackerayThe History of Henry Esmond is a historical novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, originally published in 1852. The book tells the story of the early life of Henry Esmond, a colonel in the service of Queen Anne of England. A typical example of Victorian historical novels, Thackeray's work of historical fiction tells its tale against the backdrop of late 17th- and early 18th-century England – specifically, major events surrounding the English Restoration — and utilises characters both real (but dramatised) and imagined. Plot: Using sporadically the first and third persons, Henry Esmond relates his own history in memoir fashion. The novel opens on Henry as a boy – the supposedly illegitimate (and eventually orphaned) son of Thomas, the third Viscount Castlewood, and cousin of the Jacobite fourth viscount, Francis, and his wife, the Lady Castlewood. These successors to the Castlewood estate and peerage, following the death of Henry's father, foster the boy, and he remains with them throughout his youth and early adulthood. A quiet, sober, hard-working youth, Henry is devoted to his foster family. Gentle, sensitive Lady Castlewood is his adored mother figure. Her husband is also kind to Esmond, but the hard-drinking viscount is clearly a man of limited intellect whose crude manners and thoughtless ways cause his wife a great deal of embarrassment and pain. Henry Esmond knows that his cousins—dull, good-natured Frank and sly, seductive Beatrix—will eventually inherit Castlewood. After the heartless Beatrix rejects his offer of marriage, he journeys to London to make his fortune. Esmond meets many of the celebrated English writers of the day, such as Joseph Addison and Richard Steele. Addison and Steele are both represented as model English gentlemen, who gladly mentor Esmond in his literary career, while the equally noted Jonathan Swift is depicted in most unflattering terms as a hateful misanthrope and bully. Particular venom is directed at Swift for the abundant leisure he had at the vicarage in Trim, County Meath for cultivating his garden, making a canal (after the Dutch fashion of Moor Park), and planting willows.

Between the kingdoms of Paflagonia and Crim Tartary, there lived a mysterious personage, who was known in those countries as the Fairy Blackstick, from the ebony wand or crutch which she carried; on which she rode to the moon sometimes, or upon other excursions of business or pleasure, and with which she performed her wonders. When she was young, and had been first taught the art of conjuring by the necromancer, her father, she was always practicing her skill, whizzing about from one kingdom to another upon her black stick, and conferring her fairy favors upon this Prince or that.

The Book of Snobs is a collection of satirical works by William Makepeace Thackeray published in book form in 1848, the same year as his more famous Vanity Fair. The pieces first appeared in fifty-three weekly pieces from February 28, 1846 to February 27, 1847, as "The Snobs of England, by one of themselves", in the satirical magazine Punch. The pieces, which were immensely popular and thrust Thackeray into widespread public view, were "rigorously revised" before their collection in book form and omitted the numbers which dealt with then current political issues (numbers 17–23).

The Rose and The Ring is a satirical work of fantasy fiction written by William Makepeace Thackeray, originally published at Christmas 1854 (though dated 1855).[1] It criticises, to some extent, the attitudes of the monarchy and those at the top of society and challenges their ideals of beauty and marriage.Set in the fictional countries of Paflagonia and Crim Tartary, the story revolves around the lives and fortunes of four young royal cousins, Princesses Angelica and Rosalba, and Princes Bulbo and Giglio. Each page is headed by a line of poetry summing up the plot at that point and the storyline as a whole is laid out, as the book states, as "A Fireside Pantomime". The original edition had illustrations by Thackeray who had once intended a career as an illustrator.The plot opens on the royal family of Paflagonia eating breakfast together: King Valoroso, his wife, the Queen, and their daughter, Princess Angelica. Through the course of the meal it is discovered that Prince Bulbo, heir to the neighbouring kingdom of Crim Tartary, and son of King Padella is coming to visit Paflagonia. It is also discovered, after the two women have left the table, that King Valoroso stole his crown, and all his wealth, from his nephew, Prince Giglio, when the prince was an infant.Prince Giglio and Princess Angelica have been brought up together very closely, Princess Angelica being considered the most beautiful and wisest girl in the kingdom and Giglio being much overlooked in the household. Giglio, besotted with his cousin, has given her a ring belonging to his mother, which, unknown to them, was given to her by the Fairy Blackstick and which held the power to make the wearer beautiful to everyone who beheld them. After an argument with Giglio, about the arrival of the long-awaited Prince Bulbo, Angelica throws the ring out of the window and can be seen for her own, less attractive self.Prince Bulbo, in his turn, possesses a magic rose, with the same power as the ring and coming from the same source: the Fairy Blackstick. Upon his arrival, this causes Angelica to be madly in love with him.Angelica's governess, Countess Gruffanuff, finds the magic ring in the garden and, whilst wearing it, convinces Giglio to sign a paper swearing to marry her. She then gives the ring to Angelica's maid, Betsinda, an orphan discovered by the family with a torn cloak in her possession. The maid, however, is actually Rosalba, the only child of the true king of Crim Tartary. When Betsinda wears the ring to take the warming pan around the bedrooms, Princes Bulbo and Giglio immediately fall in love with her, along with King Valoroso. This excites the rage of The Queen, Angelica and Gruffanuff, and causes Betsinda to be driven from the house.In response to Giglio's rudeness, Valoroso orders him to be executed, but his Captain of the Guards, Count Kutasoff Hedzoff, takes Bulbo to the scaffold instead, where he is reprieved at the last moment by Angelica, who takes his rose, returns to her former beauty and marries him.

The Book of Snobs is a collection of satirical works by William Makepeace Thackeray first published in the magazine Punch as The Snobs of England, By One of Themselves. Published in 1848, the book was serialised in 1846/47 around the same time as Vanity Fair. While the word 'snob' had been in use since the end of the 18th century Thackeray's adoption of the term to refer to people who look down on others who are "socially inferior" quickly gained popularity.

William Makepeace Thackery (1811–1863) was an English novelist. In his own day, he was considered second only to Charles Dickens as a writer. Today, he is best remembered for his satiric novel, Vanity Fair. Thackery calls The Rose and the Ring a “fireside pantomime,” that is, a pantomime in book form. Pantomime is a uniquely English holiday tradition, a stage production mixing fairy tales, magic, mayhem, and audience participation. Thackery here mixes all these with a gently satiric look at our ideas of beauty, privilege, obligation, and justice. Although Christmas itself is never mentioned, Thackery included it among the Christmas books he authored under the pen-name “M.A. Titmarsh.”