Pendennis and the Controversy on the "Dignity of Literature"

Abstract

C5X(U CUH has been said about Thackeray's weekday preacher response to the fame he gained through Vanity Fair. But another response was far more controversial at the time: his position on the status of writers and the writing profession, a position which embroiled him in what has been called the Dignity of Literature episode. The key text in this controversy is The History of Pendennis: His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy (1848-1850), Thackeray's first novel after Vanity Fair's great success.' By parodying the Romantic artist's sentimental and bathetic sides in Pen's early adventures, and by dramatizing the true market-determined conditions of literary production, Thackeray not only clarifies his own position on his profession, but also provides us with the most detailed description of the London literary world to be found in the writings of a major author. Furthermore, when criticized publicly for this portrait while Pendennis was still appearing, Thackeray reopens the issue right in the novel and attempts to synthesize his most polemical insights-a move with important implications for his later writing. Pendennis is thus the turning point in Thackeray's career. The novel's first half sketches out his