Memory and Legacy (Thackeray Vol 2)

Volume II of a major biographical study of William Thackeray and his family, including shedding new light on the lives of his daughters Minny and Annie.

This is a domestic biography of the Thackeray family, placing the writer in the context of his home life. The story continues long after his death, to trace the later lives of his two daughters, Anne Isabella and Harriet Marian, and their marriages. His elder daughter Annie, in particular, took responsibility for guarding and shaping her father's legacy. The source material is not Thackeray's books so much as his own more intimate papers - his letters - and the correspondence and journals of his mother and daughters. The book will appeal not just to those interested in Thackeray and the Victorians, but to the general reader of biography, to those interested in womenís studies, life writing and to followers of the family of Virginia Woolf.

Formerly Head of the Department of Performing Arts at Brunel University, John Aplin has been pursuing independent and extensive research on the Thackeray family since 2001. In 2006, he published A True Affection: Anne Thackeray Ritchie and the Tennysons. Memory and Legacy follows the first volume of his study of the Thackerays, The Inheritance of Genius, also published by The Lutterworth Press.