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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. Plot [ edit ] 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 mea

Publishing history and reception [ edit ] The Adventures of Philip   was first published as a serial in the   Cornhill Magazine   (of which Thackeray was the editor) between January 1861 and August 1862, with illustrations by the author and   Frederick Walker . [2]   It then appeared in book form published by   Smith, Elder & Co.   in three volumes in 1862, dedicated to Thackeray's friend   Matthew James Higgins . The Leipzig firm of   Bernhard Tauchnitz   issued it the same year in two volumes. [3] Critical reception of the book was on the whole not good, many reviewers suggesting that the author had written himself out. The anonymous notice in the   Saturday Review , for example, claimed that Thackeray's readers "ask him for something from his pen; what it is they do not care; and as he really has no other method of easily satisfying them, he gives them reminiscences of his old novels in profusion."   Walter Bagehot , in   The Spectator , said, "As far

The Adventures of Philip on his Way Through the World: Shewing Who Robbed Him, Who Helped Him, and Who Passed Him By ( 1861 – 62 ) is a novel by   William Makepeace Thackeray . It was the last novel Thackeray completed, and harks back to several of his previous ones, involving as it does characters from   A Shabby Genteel Story   and being, like   The Newcomes , narrated by the title character of his   Pendennis . In recent years it has not found as much favour from either readers or critics as Thackeray's early novels. Synopsis [ edit ] Philip Firmin, son of Dr. Brand Firmin and of Lord Ringwood's wealthy niece, has been left a fortune at the death of his mother. He discovers that his father is being blackmailed by Tufton Hunt, a clergyman who once performed a sham marriage ceremony between Brandon and Caroline Gann (as related in   A Shabby Genteel Story ) . Hunt now claims that the marriage was in fact valid, and urges Caroline to assert her rights and disinherit Philip

The Luck of Barry Lyndon  is a  picaresque novel  by  William Makepeace Thackeray , first published as a serial in  Fraser's Magazine  in 1844, about a member of the Irish gentry trying to become a member of the English aristocracy. Thackeray, who based the novel on the life and exploits of the Anglo-Irish  rake and fortune-hunter  Andrew Robinson Stoney , later reissued it under the title  The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq. . Plot summary [ edit ] Redmond Barry of Bally Barry, born to a genteel but ruined Irish family, fancies himself a gentleman. At the prompting of his mother, he learns what he can of courtly manners and swordplay, but fails at more scholarly subjects like Latin. He is a hot-tempered, passionate lad, and falls madly in love with his cousin, Nora. Sadly, as she is a spinster a few years older than Redmond, she is seeking a prospect with more ready cash to pay family debts. The lad tries to engage in a duel with Nora's suitor, an English officer named

Characters [ edit ] "George Brandon" : the pseudonym used by a gentleman of twenty-seven who takes lodgings with the Ganns. He has graceful manners, and the pale skin and large dark eyes of a   Romantic   poet. In fact he is the son of a   half-pay   colonel who at some cost has put him through   Eton   and   Oxford , with the result that Brandon has come to despise any way of life other than that of an aristocratic playboy. Unfortunately, he is not wealthy enough to support his tastes and is in Margate because he can hide from his   creditors   there: "He was free of his money; would spend his last   guinea   for a sensual gratification; would borrow from his neediest friend; had no kind of conscience or remorse left, but believed himself to be a good-natured, devil-may-care fellow; had a good deal of wit, and indisputably good manners, and pleasing, dashing frankness in conversation with men." Caroline Gann : the fifteen-year-old daughter of the house where B

A Shabby Genteel Story   is an early and   unfinished novel   by   William Makepeace Thackeray . It was first printed among other stories and sketches in his collection   Miscellanies .   A note in   Miscellanies   by Thackeray, dated 10 April 1857, describes it as "only the first part" of a longer story which was "interrupted at a sad period of the writer's own life" and never subsequently completed. He also describes it as being written "seventeen years ago", therefore c. 1840. This was the period when Thackeray's wife became mentally unstable, throwing his personal life into confusion. Plot summary [ edit ] After a brief   preliminary chapter   outlining the early life of certain characters the story begins in   England   in the winter of 1835. A well-born but impoverished gentleman calling himself "George Brandon" is hiding from his creditors in the out-of-season   seaside town   of   Margate . He finds cheap lodgings with a famil

Reputation and legacy [ edit ] Etching   of Thackeray, ca. 1867 During the Victorian era Thackeray was ranked second only to   Charles Dickens , but he is now much less widely read and is known almost exclusively for   Vanity Fair , which has become a fixture in university courses, and has been repeatedly adapted for the cinema and television. In Thackeray's own day some commentators, such as   Anthony Trollope , ranked his   History of Henry Esmond   as his greatest work, perhaps because it expressed Victorian values of duty and earnestness, as did some of his other later novels. It is perhaps for this reason that they have not survived as well as   Vanity Fair , which satirises those values. Thackeray saw himself as writing in the realistic tradition, and distinguished his work from the exaggerations and sentimentality of Dickens. Some later commentators have accepted this self-evaluation and seen him as a realist, but others note his inclination to use eighteenth-

Family [ edit ] Parents [ edit ] Anne Becher and William Makepeace Thackeray, c.1813 Thackeray's father, Richmond Thackeray, was born at   South Mimms   and went to India in 1798 at age sixteen as a writer (civil servant) with the   East India Company . Richmond fathered a daughter, Sarah Redfield, in 1804 with Charlotte Sophia Rudd, his possibly Eurasian mistress, and both mother and daughter were named in his will. Such liaisons were common among gentlemen of the East India Company, and it formed no bar to his later courting and marrying William's mother. [10] Thackeray's mother, Anne Becher (born 1792), was "one of the reigning beauties of the day" and a daughter of John Harmon Becher, Collector of the   South 24 Parganas district   (d. Calcutta, 1800), of an old Bengal civilian family "noted for the tenderness of its women". Anne Becher, her sister Harriet and their widowed mother, also Harriet, had been sent back to India by her autho

Works [ edit ] Thackeray began as a satirist and parodist, writing works that displayed a sneaking fondness for roguish upstarts such as Becky Sharp in   Vanity Fair , and the title characters of   The Luck of Barry Lyndon   and   Catherine . In his earliest works, written under such pseudonyms as Charles James Yellowplush, Michael Angelo Titmarsh and George Savage Fitz-Boodle, he tended towards savagery in his attacks on high society, military prowess, the institution of marriage and hypocrisy. Title-page to   Vanity Fair , drawn by Thackeray, who furnished the illustrations for many of his own books One of his earliest works, "Timbuctoo" (1829), contains a burlesque upon the subject set for the Cambridge Chancellor's Medal for English Verse (the contest was won by   Tennyson   with "Timbuctoo"). Thackeray's writing career really began with a series of satirical sketches now usually known as   The Yellowplush Papers , which appeared in   Fraser