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Carregando... The Christmas Books (1868)de William Makepeace Thackeray
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Pertence à série publicadaEveryman's Library (359) Está contido emContém
Classic Literature.
Fiction.
Short Stories.
HTML: During their lifetimes, Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray were engaged in a friendly competition of sorts to see who could gain the most stature and popularity as writers for the masses. Following in Dickens' footsteps, Thackeray began penning a series of heartwarming holiday-themed tales to be published in serial form, often under the pen name "Michael Angelo Titmarsh." Many of the most beloved tales from this series are collected in this volume. .Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
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Thackeray's 1850 Christmas Book is a jolly little account of a summer holiday trip the author makes with a lawyer friend to the German spa-town of Rougetnoirburg (not too hard to identify as Baden Baden). Like the other Christmas Books, it's only about fifty pages long, plus a dozen or so full-page drawings by the author.
As a bonus, it comes with a preface in which the author reproduces in full a mocking review of the book that has appeared in the Times and then proceeds to tear the pompous reviewer into very small pieces. Something that authors are always advised against doing, but in this case he doesn't seem to have much to fear. It's a satirical book anyway, he's already warned readers that the Times advises them not to buy it and he's sold out the first edition within a week...
It isn't really a book about Germany, it's a send-up of the English abroad, a good topic for satire then as now. Mr Titmarsh's fellow passengers on the boat to Antwerp include an appalling noisy, snobby, selfish and self-important Englishwoman, Lady Kicklebury (widow of a baronet) who tyrannises her servants, her two daughters and her son-in-law, whilst slobbering all over anyone they meet who appears to be either rich or aristocratic (and thrusting her unmarried daughter at any of them who appear to be rich and single). Needless to say, the unmarried daughter, Fanny, whom Titmarsh is also half in love with, has quietly arranged for the man who's courting her to travel to Germany on the same boat. And Lady Kicklebury has a splendid humiliation lined up for her in Rougetnoirburg.
In passing, we get a few little glimpses of German scenery (most of which no-one is looking at, as already indicated by the man in the frontispiece), and a few comic notes on the economy of Rougetnoirburg, which depends entirely on the casino proprietor Lenoir, whilst the palace of the hereditary prince crumbles slowly away.
A pleasant little diversion, which still does exactly the job it was designed for 170 years ago. (