Cover of The Newcomes Volume 2: Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family by William Makepeace Thackeray Audiobook The Newcomes Volume 2: Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family
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The Newcomes Volume 2: Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family

Author
William Makepeace Thackeray
Read by
Eloise Fairfax
Language
English
Length
17 hours 21 minutes
ISBN
9781802569247
Published
9 October 2025
Imprint
Sovereign
  • vanity
  • satire
  • social pretension
  • comedy
  • humiliation
  • fashion
  • folly
  • manners
  • 19th-century
  • absurdity

Description

The Newcomes chronicles the fortunes and misfortunes of a genteel English family, centering on Colonel Newcome—a man of unwavering honor—and his idealistic son Clive. Through Clive’s artistic ambitions, romantic entanglements, and moral trials, Thackeray explores themes of integrity, social class, and the tension between principle and pragmatism in Victorian society. With warmth and irony, the novel contrasts true virtue against worldly ambition, offering a rich, panoramic portrait of 19th-century life and the quiet heroism of decency amid moral compromise.

Author

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) wrote Vanity Fair and a satirical England of snobs, soldiers, and Becky Sharp. Born in Calcutta, ruined young, he learned the world as a magazine man and then painted it at novel length. The narrator winks; the damage is real. Thirty-one titles here — more Fair than the one book everyone names. He drew as well as he wrote, and he never quite forgave society for being as silly as it is.