The Illustrator's Book Club

Join us for the Art Division's Illustrator's Book Club as we read The Newcomes!

The Newcomes
by William Makepeace Thackeray
Illustrated by artist Howard Pyle
 
Read in serial, as originally presented in Harper’s Magazine
November 2024 through October 2026
 
What to do:
Get the book.
Start reading any time in November.
Follow the reading schedule below.
Join the discussion group, meeting periodically in person and online, starting in January 2025.
 
Read like it’s 1853! 
In the 1800s, novels were often written and published in magazines, described as ‘in serial’ or month-to-month. Readers received only a few chapters at a time. Imagine the anticipation of getting the next chapters! With our story, The Newcomes, readers got to know the characters over two years and through decades of the fictional family’s life. It is said that readers felt the loss of these characters after the last chapters ended, as did their author. Let’s experience a little of what these first readers of The Newcomes felt by following the same schedule they did.
 
Where to find the story:
With a subscription to Harper’s Magazine, you can access an archive to read the story in the original format: Home | Harper's Magazine (harpers.org)
Local or online booksellers
TTU Library
Project Gutenberg online: The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family by William Makepeace Thackeray | Project Gutenberg
Internet Archive online: Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Books, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine
 
Reading Schedule:
We’ve used the chapter’s original Roman numerals, which were also used in our copy of the book by Penguin Classics, published in 1996 with notes and introduction by David Pascoe.
 
1853 / 2024
Nov I-III
Dec IV-VI
 
1854 / 2025
Jan VII-IX
Feb X-XII
Mar XIII-XV
Apr XVI-XVII
May XVIII-XX
June XXI-XXIII
July XXIV-XXVI
Aug XXVII-XXIX
Sept XXX-XXXII
Oct XXXIII-XXXV
Nov XXXVI-XXXVIII
Dec XXXIX-XLI
 
1855 / 2026
Jan XLII-XLIV
Feb XLV-XLVII
Mar XLVIII-LI
Apr LII-LIV
May LV-LVII
June LVIII-LXI
July LXII-LXV
Aug LXVI-LXIX
Sept LXX-LXXIII
Oct LXXIV-LXXX
 

About the author:

Thackeray was born in Calcutta, India in 1811 and grew up in England. He was an essayist and fiction writer known for his social satire, “attacking Victorian society with vicious wit.” Thackeray analyzed human behavior through his work. He used plot or storyline to examine behaviors like vanity and hypocrisy that play out in society and in the human heart. In Thackeray's time he was regarded as “the only possible rival” to Charles Dickens. The Newcomes (1853-55) tells the tale of a middle-class father and son in Victorian London. Through heartbreak, greed, and death, the reader follows the Newcome family through decades of their lives.
 

About the illustration:
This painting is by artist illustrator, Howard Pyle. Pyle created it in 1908 for a story in Harper’s Magazine titled, “Pictures from Thackery—the Newcomes.” It depicts and is titled Clive and Ethel Newcome.  
 
The painting is part of the Diamond M Collection and is part of the current exhibition, The Women of Diamond M: Artists and Forms. In the exhibition, it is represented by a photographic reproduction, printed to scale, while the painting awaits conservation. It will be installed in the gallery when conservation is complete, during this reading.