First published in 1954, Thackeray is intended as a reminder that Thackeray is, after all, a great novelist. Professor Tillotson, admiring the novels as great literature, explores their common characteristics and those they share with the rest of Thackeray’s writings – for he sees Thackeray’s work as all of a piece. He is particularly interested in Thackeray’s methods of narration and in the philosophic commentary which forms a sort of trellis for almost everything he put out. He sees him mainly as a writer who, subtle as he is, address himself to readers honoured as ordinary human beings. In two appendices, Professor Tillotson deals with two particular modern opinions – that Thackeray spoiled his novels by an ‘infiltration’ into them of his own biography, and that he has no place in the great novel tradition. This book will be of interest to students of literature and history.

Yun Gao is Reader in Architecture at the University of Huddersfield and a Chartered Architect of the Royal Institute of British Architects. She received a PhD from the University of Edinburgh on the architectural heritage in SW China. She is author of numerous refereed journal papers and edited book chapters, and a number of books including Architecture of Dai Nationality in Yunnan, China and Creative Villages in SW China, and has been a recipient of research grant awards such as a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant and AHRC grants. She is the International Corresponding Editor for the Journal of Architecture (UK).

Nicholas Temple is Senior Professor of Architectural History at London Metropolitan University and formerly Director of the Centre for Urban and Built Ecologies (CUBE). A graduate of Cambridge University (Magdalene College), he has served as head of the School of Architecture at the University of Lincoln and as an assistant professor of architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. He has researched and published widely on the history and theory of architecture and the city, and was shortlisted for the International CICA Bruno Zevi Book Award in 2014 for his book Renovatio Urbis: Architecture, Urbanism and Ceremony in the Rome of Julius II (Routledge, 2011).

Jing Xiao is Associate Professor in Architecture at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Shenzhen University in China. He received a PhD from the University of Nottingham on the subject of the transformation of architectural knowledge via pictorial media in pre-modern China. He has written and published on pre-modern Chinese architectural history and modern urban and technical history of the metropolis. A chartered architect of the Royal Institute of British Architects and assistant Editor-in-chief for the World Architecture Review (China), Dr Xiao has received research grants from funding bodies such as the National Science Foundation of China and Harvard University/Getty Foundation.