William Makepeace Thackeray, The Irish Sketch Book

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Thackeray’s Irish travel book, the product of two trips to Ireland in 1840 and 1842, was published by Chapman and Hall in 1843. Following the positive reception of his Paris Sketch Book (1840), his publishers offered him an advance of £120, with the promise of £385 if the work sold 1,200 copies. They did, however, take the precaution of asking him to leave the family plate with them as security.

The Irish Sketch Book is a significant work in that, although it came before Thackeray’s greatest success with Vanity Fair (1848), it was generally well received and contributed appreciably to establishing him as a writer of note (Taylor,…

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Citation: Siddle, Yvonne. "The Irish Sketch Book". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 02 June 2021 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=490, accessed 29 March 2024.]

490 The Irish Sketch Book 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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