What Was Thackerays First Job?
WM Thackeray was born in India and educated at Charterhouse and Cambridge. When he left Cambridge in 1830 he had not graduated and had lost a lot of money through gambling. He needed to earn a living, and his first attempt was by training as a barrister. However, he never practised, and soon turned to journalism. In 1833 he became the proprietor of a weekly paper, the National Standard. This collapsed a year later, but he continued to work as a journalist at the same time as attempting to study art in both London and Paris. In 1836 he married Isabella Shawe. They soon had three daughters, of whom two survived, and were still struggling when catastrophe struck; Mrs Thackeray had a complete mental breakdown, from which she never recovered. She spent the rest of her life in institutions, while the children were largely brought up by Thackeray’s mother. Ironically, it was just at this time that his sketches and stories began to make him well known. By the late 1840s he was famous as a humo
