William Makepeace Thackeray

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) was a renowned British novelist and satirist, famous for his wit and keen social commentary. Born in Calcutta, India, he was educated in England at the Charterhouse School and Trinity College, Cambridge. Thackeray's most celebrated work, "Vanity Fair," published in 1848, established his reputation as a master of the novel-of-manners genre. Known for his realistic and unflinchingly honest portrayal of nineteenth-century British society, Thackeray critiqued its class structure and moral pretensions. His remarkable ability to blend humor and pathos made him a leading literary figure of the Victorian era, second only to Charles Dickens in popularity.