'Henry Esmond' should be spoken of by itself as a special and unique
achievement. It is a historical novel dealing with the early eighteenth
century, and in preparing for it Thackeray read and assimilated most of the
literature of the period, with the result that he succeeded in reproducing
the 'Augustan' spirit and even its literary style with an approach to
perfection that has never been rivaled. On other grounds as well the book
ranks almost if not quite beside 'Vanity Pair.' Henry Esmond himself is
Thackeray's most thoroughly wise and good character, and Beatrix is as real
and complex a woman as even Becky Sharp.
GEORGE ELIOT. The perspective of time has made it clear that among the
Victorian novelists, as among the poets, three definitely surpass the
others. With Dickens and Thackeray is to be ranked only 'George Eliot'
(Mary Anne Evans).
George Eliot was born in 1819 in the central county of Warwick from which
Shakspere had sprung two centuries and a half before. Her father, a manager
of estates for various members of the landed gentry, was to a large extent
the original both of her Adam Bede and of Caleb Garth in 'Middlemarch,'
while her own childish life is partly reproduced in the experiences of
Maggie in 'The Mill on the Floss.' Endowed with one of the strongest minds
that any woman has ever possessed, from her very infancy she studied and
read widely. Her nature, however, was not one-sided; all her life she was
passionately fond of music; and from the death of her mother in her
eighteenth year she demonstrated her practical capacity in the management
of her father's household.
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