Thackeray, William Makepiece

[Album of Drawings], [Paris: ca. 1834-1837]



Oblong 8vo (6 x 8 in.; 152 x 203 mm), 47 leaves of which 37 contain pen-and-ink (some with colored wash), and 10 contain pencil drawings, plus 20 blank leaves; a few leaves cancelled, two leaves partially cut down. Contemporary three-quarter leather and dark green boards; covers detached, spine torn. Green cloth drop-box.

W.A. White, London (offering letters from Pearson's, dated 7-8 May 1902, laid in) — Mrs. William Emerson (letter to her from Gordon Ray, dated 11 February 1941 laid in)

see Gordon N. Ray, The Letters and Private Papers of William Makepeace Thackeray (1946), vol. 1, appendix ii.

a few leaves cancelled, two leaves partially cut down. Contemporary three-quarter leather and dark green boards; covers detached, spine torn.
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Charming album of drawings by the young Thackeray.

Thackeray (1811-1863) left Cambridge University in 1830 and travelled for some time on the continent. His biographer Gordon Ray examined the present volume and (in a letter of 11 February 1941 laid in) attributes it to his period in Paris between 1834 and 1837, based on the subjects, technique, and "general tone" which is at once whimsical and sardonic.

The subjects include "Osman the Corsair, a history with quotations from the most eminent poets [Byron & Moore]," peasant figures and dogs, military figures including "Red Hussar of Frederick the Great," Napoleon, Washington, "The battle of Jena," portraits of the Grand Duke Michael and Marshal Ney, a king and queen on the gallows with the caption "Dead Weights," two dogs contesting a bone captioned "Cui Bono?," "The Interview between Bonaparte Marshal Blucher, Hetman Platoff & Lord Wellington at Aix La Chapelle in 1806," a lady entertaining two gentleman by playing "The Hogmagundy" an instrument in which the player pulls the tails of a selection of pigs, two landscapes by Major Leith Hay, scenes apparently from the theatre, and some enthusiastic ballet dancers whom Ray sees as "first sketches for his series of etchings Flore et Zéphyr (1836)."

Seven of the sketches are reproduced by Anne Thackeray Ritchie in the introductions to her Biographical Edition of the Complete Works (1902). This is one of two albums of his sketches from that period; portions of the other, the "Fitzgerald album" now in the New York Public Library (Berg Collection), are reproduced in Appendix II of the first volume of Ray's edition of the letters. Some of his letters from this period also contain similar sketches.