The Newcomes: Memoirs Of A Most Respectable Family - Hardcover

by William Makepeace Thackeray (Author), Arthur Pendennis (Editor)

The Newcomes: Memoirs Of A Most Respectable Family is a novel by William Makepeace Thackeray. The story follows the lives of the Newcome family, a wealthy and respectable family in Victorian England. The main character is Colonel Thomas Newcome, a kind and honorable man who struggles to maintain his values in a society that is becoming increasingly corrupt. The novel explores themes of love, marriage, social class, and the changing values of Victorian society. Thackeray's satirical humor and keen observations of human nature make this a compelling and entertaining read. The Newcomes is considered one of Thackeray's greatest works and is a classic of English literature.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

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The Newcomes is Thackeray's most essentially 'Victorian' novel, generous in its proportions, sharp in its criticism of the moral convolutions of the age, and encyclopaedic in its reference. Set in the 1830s and 1840s, a period of rapid change and of political and economic development, the novel considers the fortunes and misfortunes of a 'most respectable' extended middle-class family. The action moves from London to Brighton, from England to France, from the political ambitions of an older generation in the industrial North to the painterly pretensions of a younger generation in Italy. At its centre is Thomas Newcome, a retired Colonel in the Indian Army who finds the snobberies and hypocrisies of early Victorian England disconcerting. In a world of men on the make, of social mobility, and of the buying and selling of women in an aristocratic marriage market, it is the Colonel's distinctive but old-fashioned gentlemanliness that stands out from a self-seeking society. The most observant and witty among Thackeray's studies of his culture, The Newcomes is also among his most complex and allusive novels, and this edition provides particularly detailed notes which clarify his many references.