THACKERAY William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) was a famous English realist writer. R. in Calcutta. After the death of his father, a colonial official, he was taken to England as a six-year-old child. Studied at Cambridge University. But a year after entering the university, T. left it (1830) and went on a trip to Europe to study painting, for which he showed great ability from an early age (T. himself illustrated his novels and was an outstanding caricaturist ). He visited Weimar in 1830–1831, where he met Goethe. Having failed to achieve success in painting, T. turned to journalism. Became a Paris correspondent and shareholder of the London newspaper The Constitutional. In 1837, T. returned to London and began to collaborate in numerous newspapers and magazines (Fraser's Magazine, The New Monthly, etc.) as a feuilletonist and cartoonist, under a variety of pseudonyms (Jellowplush, Titmarsh, etc.), working in all genres: from parody and epigram to essays and satirical novel. Particularly noteworthy is T.'s close participation (1845–1851) in the most famous humorous magazine in England, Punch.