SOURCE: A review of Memoirs of a Victorian Gentleman: William Makepeace Thackeray, in Victorian Studies, Winter, 1980, pp. 260–62.

In the following review, Busch offers a mixed assessment of Memoirs of a Victorian Gentleman: William Makepeace Thackeray, maintaining that the book “is very well done for what it is—a salute to a decent, pained, and gifted man.”

John Carey's study is fascinating, persuasive, and most useful—and it is written in the crisp, lucid, and pungent style that makes Carey one of the most admired of present-day writers about Victorian life and literature. His The Violent Effigy (1973) is an invaluable study of Dickens and a delight to rely upon.

I can think of no better refresher for the experienced reader of Victorian fiction, and no better introduction for the student, than Carey's first chapter, a description of the writing life of his subject. Whether he describes William Makepeace Thackeray's...