Literature

4. Historical Commentary

Submitted by Rebecca Nesvet on
March, 2022

Historical Commentary

"Not always doth the writer know whither the divine Muse leadeth him."

——The Newcomes, Chapter 10

At the end of April 1839, advertisements for the May issue of Fraser's Magazine announced that the issue would contain, among other items, "Catherine: a Story. By Ikey Solomons, Esq., jun."1

6. Bibliography

Submitted by Rebecca Nesvet on

Bibliography

1. Works by Thackeray

The Book of Snobs. Ed. John A. Sutherland. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1978.

A Collection of Letters of W. M. Thackeray, 1847-1855. London, 1887 (abbreviated Collection).

The History of Henry Esmond. Ed. Edgar F. Harden. New York: Garland, 1989.

Appendix 3: The Afterlife of Catherine Hayes

Submitted by Rebecca Nesvet on

Appendix 3: The Afterlife of Catherine Hayes

Despite her death at the end of Catherine, Catherine Hayes lived on, in a marginal way, in Thackeray's later works, even provoking a minor controversy by her appearance in the serialized version of Pendennis in 1850. Earlier she had made a brief, obscure appearance at the end of Vanity Fair, when the narrator recorded Becky Sharp's three lawyers as being Messrs. Burke, Thurtell, and Hayes, Burke and Thurtell being the names of two other notorious murderers.

2. Acknowledgements

Submitted by Rebecca Nesvet on
March, 2022

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Dino Felluga and Kenneth Crowell for bringing my edition of Catherine into the electronic era via Cove. I would also like to thank those who helped with earlier versions of this edition: Professor Ira B. Nadel, who supervised the Ph.D dissertation at the University of British Columbia, on which this edition is based, along with the other members of my dissertation committee, Dr. Herbert J. Rosengarten and the late Dr. William E. Fredeman.

Catherine

Submitted by Rebecca Nesvet on
March, 2022

A forgotten masterpiece, William Makepeace Thackeray’s first novel, Catherine, has languished in obscurity, in part due to its author’s own unhappiness with it. He had set out to write a satire of the Newgate novels of the 1830’s with their glorification of criminals, but instead turned out a tale of a roguish heroine much in the mould of the equally roguish heroine of Vanity Fair: Becky Sharp. Also like Vanity Fair, this novel provides some wry social commentary through the mouth of its cynical narrator.

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