The Newcomes
by William Makepeace Thackeray
First published 1853 · English · 761 pages
- Novels
- Family saga
The Newcomes is a long family novel following several generations of a prosperous English clan, told by the writer Arthur Pendennis. At its heart are Colonel Thomas Newcome, an honourable and old-fashioned soldier home from India, and his son Clive, a young artist. Their lives are shaped by banking, marriage plans and the family's hunger for status and money. Thackeray explores how marriage is bought and sold in respectable society, and how kindness and integrity fare against it. It is among his warmest and most humane books.
Quotes
What stories are new? All types of all characters march through all fables.
The true pleasure of life is to live with your inferiors.
What money is better bestowed than that of a schoolboy's tip? How the kindness is recalled by the recipient in after days! It blesses him that gives and him that takes.
The wicked are wicked, no doubt, and they go astray and they fall, and they come by their deserts: but who can tell the mischief which the very virtuous do?