The History of Pendennis
1850
Thackeray's follow-up to Vanity Fair pulses with an energy its predecessor lacks, a young man finding his way through the world rather than a woman climbing over bodies. Pen Pendennis begins as a miserable schoolboy and stumbles forward through Oxford, journalism, and London society, each stage revealing the contradictions of genteel English life. His uncle, the worldly Major Pendennis, serves as both guide and cautionary example, while Pen's passionate entanglement with an actress forces a collision between romantic idealism and social calculation that the novel explores with neither simple condemnation nor easy approval. This is Thackeray at his most generous: his satirical eye remains sharp, but his affection for this bumbling, decent hero warmth the portrait. The result is a panoramic, supremely entertaining novel about the true ebb and flow of life, for readers who found Becky Sharp dazzling but cold, Pen offers a protagonist worth rooting for.
