The secret of the process by which consciousness invests history with meaning resides in "the content of the form,in the way our narrative capacities transform the present into a fulfillment of a past from which we would wish to have descended.  Meer

This book conveys Thackeray's development as a novelist, lecturer in Great Britain and the United States, familiar essayist, and shaper of cultural awareness as editor of a major new journal - a development especially growing out of the achievement of Vanity Fair , where he has so powerfully articulated the comical and absurd system of forces defining the human existence that he and his readers shared.  Meer

This book conveys Thackeray's development as a book reviewer, journalist, art exhibition critic, short-story writer, satirical essayist and novelist a development that culminates in the creation of his masterpiece, Vanity Fair one of the glories of English imaginative writing.  Meer

This book conveys Thackeray's development as a novelist, lecturer in Great Britain and the United States, familiar essayist, and shaper of cultural awareness as editor of a major new journal - a development especially growing out of the achievement of Vanity Fair , where he has so powerfully articulated the comical and absurd system of forces defining the human existence that he and his readers shared.  Meer

This book conveys Thackeray's development as a book reviewer, journalist, art exhibition critic, short-story writer, satirical essayist and novelist a development that culminates in the creation of his masterpiece, Vanity Fair one of the glories of English imaginative writing.  Meer