Thackeray

<p>A new approach to Thackeray. Although this study embraces all his work, it switches attention from his late novels, and bases the case for his imaginative vitality on the multifarious material - reviews, travel books, burlesques, <i>Punch</i> articles - that he turned out, mostly under severe financial stress, at the start of his writing career. Here was the breeding ground of <i>Vanity Fair</i>; here we find the subversive Thackeray, foe of humbug and high art, waylaying snobbery and the cant of social reformers with bravura and buffoonery - the Thackeray who, in Trollope''s words, ''laughed, and ate, and drank, and threw his pearls about with miraculous profusion.'' <br>In portraying the range and intensity of Thackeray''s imagination, topics singled out include: light and painting; ballet dancers; pantomime; <i>haute cuisine</i>; time''s ruins; and the rainbow realm of commerce. The picture of Thackeray, as man and artist, that emerges, is fresh and challenging.</p>