The second volume of William Makepeace Thackeray’s Pendennis (1850) follows young Arthur Pendennis deeper into London literary society, through romantic entanglements and the social climbing that Thackeray satirised with such brilliant, affectionate irony. Drawing heavily on his own early career in journalism and letters, Thackeray’s portrait of a young man learning to navigate ambition, love, and compromise is both comic and deeply perceptive.
Sharp, warm, and shrewdly observed, Pendennis stands among the finest Victorian comic novels of manners and literary life. Download this free EPUB and follow Pen through to his rightly deserved conclusion.