Pendennis (Thackeray, 1850)

Thackeray, William Makepeace. Pendennis. Pub. 1850. Ed. John Sutherland. Oxford: World's Classics, 1999.

Transpose notes from 1875 ed to Sutherland

General Notes

• interesting how much class makes a difference in development between pen and david
• also Thackeray isn't interested in childhood at all whereas for Dickens it's central to the first third of the book - pen is 16 when we start
• also difference in character: P is a rascal where D is just undisciplined
• 1850 preface interesting for acknowledgement of serialization pressures
• 13 young Arthur's idolization of his mother like Copperfield - though Mrs P seems more deserving of the "angel" title
  • but her "idol worship" of his father and uncle cause problems - 14
• 14 "He had not got beyond the theory yet...prison-house"
• 56 really funny - Pen effuses while Ms F thinks about household chores
• 65 satirizing the "jolly old times" of travel by mail coach
• 72 the structure is charmingly haphazard, almost metonymic - Mrs P mentions knowing the danger of premature engagements and this sets up a Ch VII, which gives little Laura's background (interrupting and building suspense for the resolution of Pen's engagement)
• 103 the Major craftily convinces Costigan Pen has no money (which is true - 120)
• 141 "What a deal of grief, care, and other harmful excitement does a healthy dulness and cheerful insensibility avoid!" (Describing Fotheringay)
• 142 "How lonely we are in the world! How selfish and secret, everybody!"
• 162 "What did he think about, as he lay tossing and awake?" Interesting narratirial claim of only partial omniscience, we are in his room but not his head

Theme Tracking

Reading and Writing

• 14 "He never read to improve himself out of school-hours, but, on the contrary, devoured all the novels, plays, and poetry on which he could lay his hands."
• 24 first writing - poetry in County Chronicle
• 26 Mr Smirke his tutor gives Pen an Elzevir Horace
• 68 Pen's "imaginative phrensy" with verse in his head and paper steven on his bed
• 84 the major encourages Pen to read in Debrett's every day
• 113 Emily rather indifferently parcels up Pen's letters when she decides it's over
• 134 the book club
• 143 Madame Fribsby gets "absurdly sentimental" from reading novels
• 165 part of extended satire on university life at St Boniface: "After all, private reading, as he began to perceive, was the only study which was really profitable to man; and he announced to his mamma that he should read by himself a great deal more, and in public a great deal less."
• 166 can't write without smoking, Byron aspirations
• 189-90 Oxbridge exam lists printed in the morning newspaper (to Pen's and the Major's shame)
• 219 Miss Amory's taste for soppy French romances - makes her good company for Pen?

Materiality

• 2 material description of the Major's correspondence and his "Hot newspaper"
• 169 (this immediately following account of Pen being profligate with his allowance, more interested in clothes than serious study)

[Pen] was very fond of books of all sorts: Doctor Portman had taught him to like rare editions, and his own taste led him to like beautiful bindings. It was marvellous what tall copies, and gilding, and marbling, and blind-tooling, the booksellers and binders put upon Pen's book-shelves.

• 170 [P's bill for] Wormall's dealings with Parkton, the great bookseller, for Aldine editions, black-letter folios, and richly illuminated Missals of the XVI century.
• copy out long passage on 171

Shakespeare References

• 24 "he read Shakespeare to his mother (which she said she liked, but didn't)"
• 33 Foker "Mrs Dropsicum, Bingley's mother in law, Great in Macbeth"
• 48 Ms Fotheringay prepping to be Ophelia when she and Pen meet, then P quizzes her on Hamlet and Kotzebue
• 55 Pen's fathers love of the bard, though he didn't much read the works
• 58 "He [Smirke] and Mrs. Pendennis brought books of Hamlet with them to follow the tragedy, as is the custom of honest country-folks who go to a play in state."
• 179 "[Pen] called taking pleasure "seeing life," and quoted well-known maxima from Terence, from Horace, from Shakespeare, to show that one should do all that might become a man."