Thackeray in Fareham Find!

During the 1850s, William Makepeace Thackeray was Charles Dickens' closest rival in terms of popularity and literary achievement. Born in India, he was sent to England to stay with his great-aunt in Fareham although the young Dickens had left Portsmouth by the time the six-year old Thackeray arrived. He enjoyed his time in Fareham and eventually wrote that its society was so like a novel by Jane Austen that she surely must have been born and bred there. His great historical novel "The History of Henry Esmond" (1852) has several Hampshire settings though Thackeray wasn't over-concerned with topographical accuracy, and in an account of a family party at New Year's Eve refers to Winchester Cathedral's "great grey towers". However, Winchester Cathedral is the setting for one of the major scenes in the book, the moving reconciliation between Henry Esmond and Lady Castlewood. It is a book of passion, honour, outrageous behaviour and another teasing heroine, of sorts, to match Becky Sharp. There are hours of frustration for anyone trying to identify Castlewood itself, the family's house near Winchester, and Walcote, a somewhat cosier home just a mile from Winchester.

27 September 2009 from Friday Next

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