William Makepeace Thackeray

Thackeray, William Makepeace (1811–63), English novelist, essayist, and illustrator. He did much to shape Punch and was first editor of the Cornhill Magazine (1860). His best-known novel is Vanity Fair (1848), a gentle satire of the early 19th-century middle classes. His other novels include Barry Lyndon (1844), Pendennis (1850), and Henry Esmond (1852).