Editing The Luck of Barry Lyndon (section)

==Themes==

===A question of genealogy===
From the first paragraphs of his narrative, with the help of heraldists, the Englishman Gwillim and the Frenchman Louis Pierre d'Hozier (p. 13, then 139, according to the 1975 edition used as a reference), Barry takes stock of his lineage: "I am of the opinion that there is no gentleman in all of Europe who has not heard of the Barry family of Barryogue, in the kingdom of Ireland [...]" Throughout the novel, he frequently returns to this subject, especially in chapter IV where his uncle, the Chevalier de Bali-Bari, asserts that this is "the only knowledge becoming of a gentleman." In fact, Thackeray himself shared this concern for genealogy, particularly while writing the novel; Fraser's Magazine had just featured Drummond (a list of noble families with mention of their genealogy) as a theme before The Luck of Barry Lyndon.

===Nobility of heart===
This question of nobility of heart as opposed to that of birth is in the air: Dickens takes it up four years after Barry Lyndon in Great Expectations (1860), another first-person novel, where he has Herbert Pocket say exactly the same thing as he undertakes to instill some life principles in young Pip and quotes his father Matthew Pocket: "It is one of his principles that no man has ever behaved like a gentleman without first having been, since the world began, a gentleman at heart. He says, there is no veneer that can hide the grain of wood, and the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself." In the same novel, Joe Gargery the blacksmith, who has always protected Pip from the wrath of his shrewish sister, goes to London to see his young brother-in-law. Not knowing quite what to do with his hat on arrival, he realizes that Pip is now ashamed of him; sorry for not having respected his rank, he returns disillusioned to his forge, while Pip, led astray by snobbery, says, "He made me lose my temper and exasperated me" (chapter XXVII, p. 631).

===Events in Ireland===
Another concern of Thackeray's is the events in Ireland: although the story of Barry Lyndon is supposed to take place in the 18th century, the book echoes the Anglo-Irish relations of the first half of the 19th century, especially the campaign for the abolition of the [[Acts of Union 1800|Act of Union]], which, under the impetus of [[Daniel O'Connell]], raged in the 1840s and culminated in 1843 with the revival of the so-called [[Irish Home Rule movement]].

===The tyrannical rakehell===
The last part of the story, concerning Redmond Barry's tumultuous relationship with Lady Lyndon, is inspired by the life of [[Andrew Robinson Stoney]]-Bowes, a type of character that the English commonly call a "Rake" or "Rakehell", meaning a gambler, debaucher, reveller, and indebted person.<ref>{{cite book|language=en|author1=Linnane Fergus|title=The Lives of the English Rakes|location=London|publisher=Portrait|year=2006|pages=113–166|isbn=0-7499-5096-X}}.</ref> And according to Robert A. Colby, the plot involving the {{lang|en|Princess of X}} is based on what Thackeray called "a silly little book", titled ''L'Empire, ou, Dix ans sous Napoléon'' (1836), by Baron [[Étienne-Léon de Lamothe-Langon]] (1786-1864),<ref>{{cite book|first=Étienne Léon de|last=Lamothe-Langon|title=L'Empire, ou, Dix ans sous Napoléon, vol. IV|location=Paris|publisher=Charles Allandin|year=1836}}.</ref> which relates, among other things, the execution of Princess Caroline by the King of Wurttemberg for adultery<ref>{{cite book|language=en|first=William Makepeace|last=Thackeray|title=Letters, vol. II|page=139}}</ref><ref group="N">Due to a lack of historical documents, this event cannot be authenticated and appears to be fictional.</ref> The two stories seem to have merged in Thackeray's mind, as both involve tyrannical husbands, hysterical wives, and adultery against a backdrop of a corrupt society.<ref name="Colby"/>

===The Irishman William Maginn===
Barry's grim ending echoes that of the real-life Irish journalist and co-founder of ''[[Fraser's Magazine]]'', [[William Maginn]] (1794-1842). "Maginn a superb subject for a little morality", comments Thackeray upon reading an obituary tribute published in ''Fraser's''.<ref name="Colby4">{{harvnb|Colby|1966|p=115}}</ref> However, unlike Barry, who is uneducated, Maginn is a scholarly and witty scholar, but shares with him an easy charm and an abyssal prodigality, and in 1842 his indebtedness landed him in Fleet Prison, from which he only emerged, consumed by [[tuberculosis]], to die that same year.

===The dandy George Brummell===
A parallel can also be drawn between the shameful end of Barry in prison and the miserable exile of the famous "Beau" Brummell (1778-1840) in France, who fled from his debts and whose career has been in the spotlight since William Jesse published his biography in 1844. Thackeray himself gave a review of this publication in the ''Morning Chronicle'' of 6 May 1844, reprinted in ''{{lang|en|Thackeray's Contributions to the Morning Chronicle}}'', Gordon N. Ray, Urbana, Illinois, 1995, p. 31-39, while ''Barry Lyndon'' was being written. Moreover, in chapter XIII, p. 193, Thackeray places an allusion in the form of a wink under the pen of his narrator hero:

{{Blockquote|Think of the fashion of London being led by a Br-mm-l! [Footnote: This manuscript must have been written at the time when Mr. Brummel was the leader of the London fashion.] a nobody’s son: a low creature, who can no more dance a minuet than I can talk Cherokee; who cannot even crack a bottle like a gentleman; who never showed himself to be a man with his sword in his hand: as we used to approve ourselves in the good old times, before that vulgar Corsican upset the gentry of the world!}}

This was an exclamation intended for the Victorian public.<ref name="Colby4"/>

===The seducer Giacomo Casanova===
Finally, it is not excluded, according to Anisman, cited by Colby, that Thackeray may have thought, or even borrowed from the ''[[Histoire de ma vie|Mémoires de Jacques Casanova]]'' to which Barry refers in chapter IX, the Venetian adventurer [[Giacomo Casanova]] (1725–1798) mentioned twice (pp. 128, 141) and who, like Barry, writes that he "lived like a philosopher".