Transcribed from the 1885 Cupples, Upham and Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org [Picture: Book cover] [Picture: Portrait of Thackeray] THACKERAY’S LONDON. _A DESCRIPTION OF HIS HAUNTS AND_ _THE SCENES OF HIS NOVELS_. BY WILLIAM H. RIDEING. * * * * * _LONDON_ J. W. JARVIS & SON, 28, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W.C. * * * * * BOSTON, U.S. CUPPLES, UPHAM AND CO. 1885. _Copyright_, 1885. _Washington_, _D. C._ BY WILLIAM HENRY RIDEING. * * * * * LONDON: S. AND J. BRAWN, PRINTERS, 13, GATE STREET, LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS The portrait is engraved from the large etching by G. B. SMITH in “ENGLISH ETCHINGS,” by kind permission of the proprietor. * * * * * We also have to acknowledge, with thanks, permission from MESSRS. SMITH, ELDER & CO., to introduce the various excerpts from Thackeray’s Works found in the following pages. _THE PUBLISHERS_. I. Thackeray does not give the same opportunities for the identification of his scenes as Dickens. The elaboration with which the latter localizes his characters, and the descriptive minutiæ with which he makes their haunts no less memorable than themselves, are not to be found in the works of the author of _Vanity Fair_. No faculty was stronger in Dickens, or of more service to him, than his power of word-painting. He reproduces the objects by which the persons he describes are surrounded with a fidelity which would be tedious, if it were not relieved by the humor which humanizes bricks, and imparts a grotesque sort of sensibility to articles of furniture; and it is not easy to think of any of his leading characters without being reminded of the neighborhoods in which they played their parts.