Vanity Fair
Something about author:
William Makepeace Thackeray: an English novelist of the 19th century. famous for his satirical works Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of English society.Family life and background Richmond, was born at South Mimms and went to India in 1798 at the age of sixteen to assume his duties as writer (secretary) with the East India Company. Richmond fathered a daughter, Sarah Redfield, born in 1804, by Charlotte Sophia Rudd, his native and possibly Eurasian mistress, the mother and daughter being 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.Mother
Anne Becher, born 1792, was "one of the reigning beauties of the day," 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 widowed mother Harriet had been sent back to India by her authoritarian guardian grandmother, widow Ann Becher, in 1809 on the Earl Howe. Anne's grandmother had told her that the man she loved, Henry Carmichael-Smyth, an ensign of the Bengal Engineers whom she met at an Assembly Ball in Bath, Somerset during 1807, had died, and Henry was told that Anne was no longer interested in him. This was not true. Though Carmichael-Smyth was from a distinguished Scottish military family, Anne's grandmother went to extreme lengths to thwart their marriage; surviving family letters state that she wanted a better match for her granddaughter.
Anne Becher and Richmond Thackeray were married in Calcutta on 13 October 1810. Their only child, William, was subsequently born on 18 July 1811.There was a fine miniature portrait of the exuberant and youthful Anne Becher Thackeray and William Makepeace Thackeray at about age 2,