Thackeray Among the Annuals: Morality, Cultural Authority and the Literary Annual Genre

Published in monthly numbers between October 1848 and December 1850, William Makepeace Thackeray's The History of Pendennis depicts the publishing culture of the preceding era. Set in mid-1820s London, the novel's often unflattering portrayal of literary men offended several of Thackeray's contemporaries, notable among them James Forster and John Douglas Cook.¹ Thackeray defended himself and his novel in a January 1850 letter to the Morning Chronicle. In it, he explains, "I hope that a comic writer, because he describes an author as improvident, and another as a parasite, may not only be guiltless of a desire to vilify his profession, but may really have its honour at heart."² As recent criticism on the novel has noted, in addition to being improvident and parasitical, authors in Pendennis are portrayed – perhaps most damningly of all – as paid labourers.³ Employed by profit-oriented publishers and obliged to write for a paying public, Thackeray's men of letters are involved in fundamentally commercial endeavours and are obliged to "work and pay like their neighbours."⁴

Arthur Pendennis is no exception. Short on money, he takes advantage of a rivalry between two publishers, Bacon and Bungay. Former partners, these men compete in various genres: "no sooner does one bring out a book of travels, or poems, a magazine or periodical, quarterly, or monthly, or weekly, or annual, but the rival is in the field with something similar."⁵ Pendennis becomes a regular contributor to Bungay's weekly, the Pall Mall Gazette, and eventually manoeuvres Bacon and Bungay into a bidding war over his first novel. He begins his career more modestly, however, by making pseudonymous contributions to a literary annual published by Bacon. Typical of the genre, the Spring Annual is:

a beautiful gilt volume ... edited by Lady Violet Lebas, and numbering amongst its contributors not only the most eminent, but the most fashionable poets of our time. ... The book was daintily illustrated with pictures of reigning beauties, or other prints of a tender and voluptuous character; and, as these plates were prepared long beforehand, requiring much time in engraving, it was the eminent poets who had to write for the plates, and not the painters who illustrated the poems.⁶

Pendennis writes "The Church Porch," a poem for an engraving, and also contributes a ballad written at an earlier date. Initially elated by Bacon's decision to accept and pay for these pieces, the young writer discovers a downside to publishing-house rivalries when the Spring Annual is reviewed in the Pall Mall Gazette. Unaware of Pendennis's involvement with the annual, Bungay's reviewer "cruelly mauled"⁷ the book, showing "no more mercy than a bull would have on a parterre."⁸ More than simply a lesson for an unseasoned author, this episode allows Thackeray to characterize literary annuals as objects of both critical disdain and commercial exchange: having "cut up the volume to his heart's content," the reviewer "sold it to a bookstall, and purchased a pint of brandy with the proceeds."⁹

Thackeray's depiction of the Spring Annual is drawn from personal experience. Like Pendennis, Thackeray contributed to literary annuals, publishing three poems and two short stories in The Keepsake and Fisher's Drawing-Room Scrapbook.¹⁰ However, unlike his fictional hero, Thackeray began contributing to annuals well into his career, starting with "The Anglers" in 1847. The poem, like the vast majority of annual poetry, was written to accompany an engraving; other contributions, such as "Lucy's Birthday," appeared in annuals but were not composed for them. Thackeray also wrote three reviews of literary annuals for Fraser's Magazine and the Times, specifically "A Word on the Annuals" (Fraser's Magazine, December 1837), "The Annuals" (The Times, 2 November 1838) and "Our Annual Execution" (Fraser's Magazine, January 1839), together with several reviews that make passing reference to annuals, notably "A Second Lecture on the Fine Arts, By Michael Angelo Titmarsh, Esquire" (Fraser's Magazine, June 1839), "About a Christmas Book" (Fraser's Magazine, December 1845) and "A Grumble about the Christmas Books...