The Luck of Barry Lyndon

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The Floating Press, Feb 1, 2011 - Fiction - 347 pages
Need a good belly laugh? Set off on the journey of a lifetime with ne'er-do-well Barry Lyndon, the lovably wicked protagonist of William Makepeace Thackeray's beloved picaresque novel. Although the prominent Lyndon clan had an aristocratic past, the money has long since run out, and Barry Lyndon makes his way across Europe trying to restore his reputation and fortune, encountering a series of hilarious scrapes and disasters along the way.
 

Contents

Barry Lyndon A Bibliographical Note
5
Chapter I My Pedigree and FamilyUndergo the Influence of the Tender Passion
11
Chapter II I Show Myself to Be a Man of Spirit
54
Chapter III A False Start in the Genteel World
80
Chapter IV In Which Barry Takes a Near View of Military Glory
101
Chapter V Barry Far from Military Glory
116
Chapter VI The Crimp Waggon Military Episodes
140
Chapter VII Barry Leads a Garrison Life and Finds Many Friends There
166
Chapter XI In Which the Luck Goes Against Barry
241
Chapter XII Tragical History of Princess of X
254
Chapter XIII I Continue My Career as a Man of Fashion
285
Chapter XIV I Return to Ireland and Exhibit My Splendour and Generosity in that Kingdom
309
Chapter XV I Pay Court to My Lady Lyndon
327
Chapter XVI I Provide Nobly for My Family
350
Chapter XVII I Appear as an Ornament of English Society
375
Chapter XVIII My Good Fortune Begins to Waver
404

Chapter VIII Barrys Adieu to Military Profession
183
Chapter IX I Appear in a Manner Becoming My Name and Lineage
195
Chapter X More Runs of Luck
215
Chapter XIX Conclusion
439
Endnotes
486
Copyright

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About the author (2011)

William Makepeace Thackeray was born in Calcutta, India, where his father was in service to the East India Company. After the death of his father in 1816, he was sent to England to attend school. Upon reaching college age, Thackeray attended Trinity College, Cambridge, but he left before completing his degree. Instead, he devoted his time to traveling and journalism. Generally considered the most effective satirist and humorist of the mid-nineteenth century, Thackeray moved from humorous journalism to successful fiction with a facility that was partially the result of a genial fictional persona and a graceful, relaxed style. At his best, he held up a mirror to Victorian manners and morals, gently satirizing, with a tone of sophisticated acceptance, the inevitable failure of the individual and of society. He took up the popular fictional situation of the young person of talent who must make his way in the world and dramatized it with satiric directness in The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844), with the highest fictional skill and appreciation of complexities inherent within the satiric vision in his masterpiece, Vanity Fair (1847), and with a great subtlety of point of view and background in his one historical novel, Henry Esmond (1852). Vanity Fair, a complex interweaving in a vast historical panorama of a large number of characters, derives its title from John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and attempts to invert for satirical purposes, the traditional Christian image of the City of God. Vanity Fair, the corrupt City of Man, remains Thackeray's most appreciated and widely read novel. It contrasts the lives of two boarding-school friends, Becky Sharp and Amelia Smedley. Constantly attuned to the demands of incidental journalism and his sense of professionalism in his relationship with his public, Thackeray wrote entertaining sketches and children's stories and published his humorous lectures on eighteenth-century life and literature. His own fiction shows the influence of his dedication to such eighteenth-century models as Henry Fielding, particularly in his satire, which accepts human nature rather than condemns it and takes quite seriously the applicability of the true English gentleman as a model for moral behavior. Thackeray requested that no authorized biography of him should ever be written, but members of his family did write about him, and these accounts were subsequently published.

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