Editing William Makepeace Thackeray (section)

===College education===
Illness in his last year at Charterhouse, during which he reportedly grew to his full height of {{height|ft=6|in=3}}, postponed his matriculation at [[Trinity College, Cambridge]], until February&nbsp;1829.<ref name=odnb/>

Never very keen on academic studies, Thackeray left Cambridge in 1830, but some of his earliest published writing appeared in two university periodicals, ''The Snob'' and ''The Gownsman''.<ref>{{acad |id=THKY826WM |name=Thackeray, William Makepeace}}</ref>
[[Image:William Makepeace Thackeray - self caricature - Project Gutenberg eText 19222.jpg|thumb|Self Caricature by Thackeray]]
Thackeray then travelled for some time on [[Continental Europe]], visiting Paris and [[Weimar]], where he met [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]]. He returned to England and began to study law at the [[Middle Temple]], but soon gave that up. On reaching age&nbsp;21, he came into his inheritance from his father, but he squandered much of it on gambling and on funding two unsuccessful newspapers, ''The National Standard'' and ''The Constitutional'', for which he had hoped to write. He also lost a good part of his fortune in the collapse of two Indian banks. Forced to consider a profession to support himself, he turned first to art, which he studied in Paris, but did not pursue it, except in later years as the illustrator of some of his own novels and other writings.{{citation needed|date=October 2015}}