W.M. Thackeray / William Rainey (ill) - The Newcomes - 1903

"The Newcomes" by W.M. Thackeray and illustrated by William Rainey - Blackie & Son, London - 1903 first thus edition - 18cmx15cm - condition: good, decorated binding, some rubbing, name to ffep, all Rainey illustrations present

The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family is a novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, first published in 1854 and 1855. The Newcomes was published serially over about two years, as Thackeray himself says in one of the novel's final chapters. The novel shows its serial origin: it is very long (an undated but clearly very old edition with tiny type fills 551 pages) and its events occur over many years and in several countries before the reader reaches the predictable conclusion. The main part of The Newcomes is set a decade or two after the action of Vanity Fair, and some of the characters in Vanity Fair are mentioned peripherally in The Newcomes. The narrator is Arthur Pendennis, the protagonist of Pendennis. It was illustrated by Richard Doyle, both in literal renderings of the scenes and in symbolic and fanciful depictions of events and characters.[1]