Editing William Makepeace Thackeray (section)

==Reputation and legacy==
{{original research section|date=August 2018}}
[[File:Etching of William Makepeace Thackeray by George Barnett Smith.jpg|thumb|right|[[Etching]] of Thackeray, {{circa|1867}}]]
During the Victorian era Thackeray was ranked second only to [[Charles Dickens]], but he is now much less widely read and is known almost exclusively for ''Vanity Fair''. The novel has become a fixture in university courses, and has been repeatedly adapted for the cinema and television.

In Thackeray's own day some commentators, such as [[Anthony Trollope]], ranked his ''History of Henry Esmond'' as his greatest work, perhaps because it expressed Victorian values of duty and earnestness, as did some of his other later novels. It is perhaps for this reason that they have not survived as well as ''Vanity Fair'', which satirises those values.

Thackeray saw himself as writing in the [[Realism (arts)|realistic]] tradition, and distinguished his work from the exaggerations and [[sentimentality]] of Dickens. Some later commentators have accepted this self-evaluation and seen him as a realist, but others note his inclination to use eighteenth-century narrative techniques, such as digressions and direct addresses to the reader, and argue that through them he frequently disrupts the illusion of reality. The school of [[Henry James]], with its emphasis on maintaining that illusion, marked a break with Thackeray's techniques.

Indian popular [[Marathi people|Marathi]] politician [[Bal Thackeray]]'s father [[Keshav Sitaram Thackeray]] was an admirer of William; Keshav later changed his surname from Panvelkar to "Thackeray".<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-20389849 |title=The legacy of Bal Thackeray |author=Soutik Biswas |date=19 November 2012 |publisher=BBC }}</ref><ref name="Sree_ON_2012">{{cite web |url=http://www.oneindia.com/2012/11/18/why-bal-thackeray-had-an-english-surname-1100587.html |title=Why Bal Thackeray had an English surname |author=Sreekumar |publisher=One India |date=18 November 2012 }}</ref>

[[Charlotte Brontë]] dedicated the second edition of ''[[Jane Eyre]]'' to Thackeray.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Charlotte Brontë's dress gaffe ruled out 165 years after Thackeray dinner|url=http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/16/charlotte-brontes-dress-gaffe-ruled-out-165-years-after-thackeray-dinner|date=15 June 2016|website=The Guardian|language=en|access-date=6 May 2020}}</ref>

In 1887 the [[Royal Society of Arts]] unveiled a [[blue plaque]] to commemorate Thackeray at the house at 2 Palace Green, London, that had been built for him in the 1860s.<ref>{{Cite web |title=William Makepeace Thackeray {{!}} Novelist {{!}} Blue Plaques |url=https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/blue-plaques/william-makepeace-thackeray |access-date=2024-02-21 |website=English Heritage}}</ref> It is now the location of the [[Embassy of Israel, London|Israeli Embassy]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol37/pp162-193|title=The Crown estate in Kensington Palace Gardens: Individual buildings &#124; British History Online|website=www.british-history.ac.uk}}</ref> 

Thackeray's former home in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, is now a restaurant named after the author.<ref>[http://www.bookatable.co.uk/thackerays-tunbridge-wells-kent Thackeray's, 85 London Rd, Tunbridge Wells, TN1 1EA] Bookatable. Downloaded 20 February 2016.</ref>

Thackeray was also a member of the Albion Lodge of the [[Ancient Order of Druids]] at Oxford.<ref>{{Cite web|url = https://apps2.oxfordshire.gov.uk/srvheritage/recordSearch?offset=0|title = Oxfordshire County Council|date = 11 November 2005|access-date = 14 December 2019|archive-date = 20 September 2020|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20200920170552/https://apps2.oxfordshire.gov.uk/srvheritage/recordSearch?offset=0|url-status = dead}}</ref>