William Makepeace Thackeray belonged to two worlds, although he spent most of his life pretending, perhaps even to himself, that he belonged to only one. He was born in Calcutta into the comfortable Anglo-Indian world created by the East India Company, and then, as a small boy, was sent away to England, where he was expected to become an English gentleman.
The separation was permanent. India became a place of fragments: a few childhood memories, relatives’ stories, the fortunes his family accumulated, and the Anglo-Indian families who continued to pass through his life. England became the country in which he would lose money, fall in love, suffer a devastating family tragedy, discover journalism, and become one of the great novelists of the Victorian age.
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