he publication of _Vanity Fair_ (1847-1848)
that he began to be recognized as one of the great novelists of his day.
All his earlier works are satires, some upon society, others upon the
popular novelists,--Bulwer, Disraeli, and especially Dickens,--with whose
sentimental heroes and heroines he had no patience whatever. He had
married, meanwhile, in 1836, and for a few years was very happy in his
home. Then disease and insanity fastened upon his young wife, and she was
placed in an asylum. The whole after life of our novelist was darkened by
this loss worse than death. He became a man of the clubs, rather than of
his own home, and though his wit and kindness made him the most welcome of
clubmen, there was an undercurrent of sadness in all that he wrote. Long
afterwards he said that, though his marriage ended in shipwreck, he "would
do it over again; for behold Love is the crown and completion of all
earthly good."

After the moderate success of _Vanity Fair_, Thackeray wrote the three
novels of his middle life upon which his fame chiefly rests,--_Pendennis_
in 1850, _Henry Esmond_ in 1852, and _The Newcomes_ in 1855. Dickens's
great popular success as a lecturer and dramatic reader had led to a
general desire on the part of the public to see and to hear literary men,
and Thackeray, to increase his income, gave two remarkable courses of
lectures, the first being _English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century_,
and the second _The Four Georges_,--both courses being delivered with
gratifying success in England and especially in America. Dickens, as we
have seen, was disappointed in America and vented his displeasure in
outrageous criticism; but Thackeray, with his usual good breeding, saw only
the best side of his generous entertainers, and in both his public and
private utterances emphasized the virtues of the new land, whose restless
energy seemed to fascinate him. Unlike Dickens, he had no confidence in
himself when he faced an audience, and like most literary men he disliked
lecturing, and soon gave it up. In 1860 he became editor of the _Cornhill
Magazine_, which prospered in his hands, and with a comfortable income he
seemed just ready to do his best work for the world (which has always
believed that he was capable of even better things than he ever wrote) when
he died suddenly in 1863. His body lies buried in Kensal Green, and only a
bust does honor to his memory in Westminster Abbey.

WORKS OF THACKERAY. The beginner