Editing William Makepeace Thackeray (section)

===Parents===

Thackeray's father, Richmond Thackeray, was born at [[South Mimms]] and went to India in 1798 at age sixteen as a writer (civil servant) with the [[East India Company]]. Richmond's father's name was also William Makepeace Thackeray.<ref>{{cite magazine |title=William Makepeace Thackeray traded elephants in Sylhet |date=28 May 2016 |magazine=Cold Noon |url=https://coldnoon.com/magazine/news/travel-bulletin/william-makepeace-thackeray-traded-elephants-in-sylhet/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171023181329/http://coldnoon.com/magazine/news/travel-bulletin/william-makepeace-thackeray-traded-elephants-in-sylhet/|url-status=usurped|archive-date=23 October 2017}}</ref> Richmond fathered a daughter, Sarah Redfield, in 1804 with Charlotte Sophia Rudd, his possibly Eurasian mistress, and both mother and daughter were named in his will. Such liaisons were common among gentlemen of the East India Company, and it formed no bar to his later courting and marrying William's mother.<ref name=Menon>{{cite web |last=Menon |first=Anil |date=29 March 2006 |title=William Makepeace Thackeray: The Indian in the closet |website=Round Dice |via=yet.typepad.com |url=http://yet.typepad.com/round_dice/2006/03/william_makepea.html |url-status=dead |access-date=3 December 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100614010910/http://yet.typepad.com/round_dice/2006/03/william_makepea.html |archive-date=14 June 2010}}</ref>

[[Image:Ann & Wm M'peace Thackeray,Madras age 2 by Chinnery.jpg|thumb|left|Anne Becher and William Makepeace Thackeray by [[George Chinnery]], {{circa|1813}}]]
Thackeray's mother, Anne Becher (born 1792), was "one of the reigning beauties of the day" and a daughter of John Harmon Becher, Collector of the [[South 24 Parganas district]] (d. Calcutta, 1800), of an old Bengal civilian family "noted for the tenderness of its women". Anne Becher, her sister Harriet and their widowed mother, also Harriet, had been sent back to India by her authoritarian guardian grandmother, Ann Becher, in 1809 on the ''Earl Howe''. Anne's grandmother had told her that the man she loved, Henry Carmichael-Smyth, an ensign in the [[Bengal Engineers]] whom she met at an Assembly Ball in 1807 in [[Bath, Somerset|Bath]], had died, while he was told that Anne was no longer interested in him. Neither of these assertions was true. Though Carmichael-Smyth was from a distinguished Scottish military family, Anne's grandmother went to extreme lengths to prevent their marriage. Surviving family letters state that she wanted a better match for her granddaughter.<ref name="Alexander">{{cite web |last=Alexander |first=Eric |year=2007 |title=Ancestry of William Thackeray |website=Henry Cort Father of the Iron Trade (henrycort.net) |url=http://www.henrycort.net/hrthack.htm |access-date=10 February 2009 |url-status=usurped |archive-url=https://archive.today/20130221150842/http://www.henrycort.net/hrthack.htm |archive-date=21 February 2013}}</ref>

Anne Becher and Richmond Thackeray were married in Calcutta on 13&nbsp;October 1810. Their only child, William, was born on 18&nbsp;July 1811.<ref name="Gilder">{{cite magazine |last1=Gilder |first1=Jeannette Leonard |last2=Gilder |first2=Joseph Benson |date=15 May 1897 |title={{grey|[no title cited]}} |magazine=The Critic: An illustrated Monthly Review of Literature, Art, and Life |publisher=Good Literature Pub. Co. |quote=Original from Princeton University, Digitized 18&nbsp;April 2008 |pages=335 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MTMZAAAAYAAJ&q=%22Richmond+Thackeray%22+died&pg=PT346}}</ref> There is a fine miniature portrait of Anne Becher Thackeray and William Makepeace Thackeray, aged about two, done in Madras by [[George Chinnery]] {{circa|1813}}.<ref>{{cite web |title=Rabbiting on: Ooty well preserved & flourishing |type=blog |website=gibberandsqueak.blogspot.com |date=8 February 2009 |url=http://gibberandsqueak.blogspot.com/2009/02/ooty-well-preserved-flourishing.html}}</ref>

Anne's family's deception was unexpectedly revealed in 1812, when Richmond Thackeray unwittingly invited the supposedly dead Carmichael-Smyth to dinner. Five years later, after Richmond had died of a fever on 13&nbsp;September 1815, Anne married Henry Carmichael-Smyth, on 13&nbsp;March 1817. The couple moved to England in 1820, after having sent William off to school there more than three years earlier. The separation from his mother had a traumatic effect on the young Thackeray, which he discussed in his essay "On Letts's Diary" in ''The Roundabout Papers''.