Written immediately after Vanity Fair, Pendennis has a similar atmosphere
of brooding disillusion, tempered by the most jovial of wits. But here
Thackeray plunders his own past to create the character of Pendennis and
the world in which he lives: from miserable schoolboy to striving
journalist, from carefree Oxbridge to the high (and low) life of London.
The result is a superbly panoramic blend of people, action and background.
The true ebb and flow of life is caught and the credibility of Pen, his
worldly uncle, the Major, and many of the other characters, extends far
beyond the pages of the novel. Held together by Thackeray's flowing,
confident prose, with its conversational ease of tone, Pendennis is as rich
a portrait of England in the 1830s and 40s as it is a thorough and
thoroughly entertaining self-portrait.