tani reviewed The History of Pendennis : His Fortunes Misfortunes, His Friends His Greatest Enemy (The Penguin English Library) on
Written immediately after Vanity Fair, Pendennis has a similar atmosphere of brooding disillusion, tempered by the most jovial of wits.
But here Thakeray plunders his own past to create the character of Pendennis and the world in which he lives: from miserable schoolboy to striving journalist, from carefree Oxbridge to the high (and low) life of London. The result is a superbly panoramic blend of people, action and background. As rich a portrait of England in the 1830s and 40s as it is a thorough and thoroughly entertaining self-portrait.
But here Thakeray plunders his own past to create the character of Pendennis and the world in which he lives: from miserable schoolboy to striving journalist, from carefree Oxbridge to the high (and low) life of London. The result is a superbly panoramic blend of people, action and background. As rich a portrait of England in the 1830s and 40s as it is a thorough and thoroughly entertaining self-portrait.
