Henry Esmond

Containing many of his own emotions and memories, Henry Esmond was the novel Thackeray valued above all others. Published in 1852, it is set in the England of the later Stuarts, when political and religious feelings ran high. Its eponymous hero, enamoured of the Jacobite Lady Castlewood and her wayward daughter Beatrix, distinguishes himself in Marlborough's campaigns against Louis XIV, but comes to grief in an ingenious but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to depose George I in favour of the Old Pretender. This edition uses the Oxford Thackeray text of 1908, which includes the emendations of the 1858 edition.