William Makepeace Thackeray's status as a writer, illustrator, and critic of children's literature is problematic. Throughout his career he adopted and parodied the genres most associated in his day with juvenile audiences. Fairy tales, Arabian Nights imitations, sequels to famous fables and romances, and Christmas books poured from his pen. So too did personal essays and reviews that took childhood and its literature for their subjects. Though his "Fireside Pantomime" in The Rose and the Ring (1855) proved to be his only enduring work written for the young, Thackeray's frequent and often ironic excursions into fable and tale made him one of Victorian England's most astute commentators on children's literature.

His upbringing suggests why Thackeray's attitude toward children's literature often oscillates between sarcasm and nostalgia. He was born on 18 July 1811 in Calcutta, the only child of Richmond Makepeace Thackeray, one of the many young Englishmen seeking to make their...