Will I love The History of Henry Esmond?

Today, Thackeray is best remembered for Vanity Fair, but many of his fellow writers—including Anthony Trollope and later Virginia Woolf—thought Henry Esmond was his best book. The story itself can be hard to appreciate, delving into the intricacies of eighteenth-century politics. George Eliot called it “the most uncomfortable book you can imagine” because the hero ends up marrying his mother (figure).

The real charm of the book lies in its style, which is a painstaking pastiche of English in the age of Queen Anne. Thackeray insisted that the first edition be published using an eighteenth-century font to ensure the illusion… show more.