The Illustrator's Book Club

Illustrator's Book Club Cover

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

The Newcomes Book Cover

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!

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 an introduction by David Pascoe.

Test your Roman numerals knowledge!

Roman Numeral	Number
I	1 (one)
V	5 (five)
X	10 (ten)
L	50 (fifty)

1853 / 2024

November: Chapters I-III

When was the last time you read a story in which Owl and Fox were arguing in words? Chapter I of The Newcomes introduces cunning, devouring, sneaking, envy, privilege, wisdom, scholarship, and airs in a fable or story using animals as characters to deliver a moral. This surprising start (to our 21st-century ears) allows the author to warn us that not all will be as it seems on our two-year journey with the Newcome family in England.

With this warning duly given, the story’s author attends the theatre with friends, followed by dinner at the local pub, where, to his surprise, Colonel Newcome enters with his son Clive (the young man in our painting), whom he’d known at school. The Colonel has returned to England from a 35-year military service in India. He visits the pub to reacquaint himself with the who’s who of English society and politics.

When someone jokes that young Clive should be in bed (too young to be in a pub), Colonel Newcome replies, “Why shouldn’t my boy have innocent pleasure? I was allowed none when I was a young chap, and the severity was nearly the ruin of me.” We learn the Colonel is enthusiastic and generous, one who laughs, delights, and sings – and erupts in anger when things get a bit too rowdy. What is this ‘severity’ and near ‘ruin’ he mentions?

Chapter II tells the Newcome family history as far back as 1775, how they made the family fortune, and how the Colonel, Clive’s father, becomes estranged from his parents and leaves for India "frantic with wrath and despair.” There, like his own father, he winds up a widowed parent.

Chapter III recounts the correspondence in the Colonel’s “letter-box” (no smartphone for him). Through the conflicting voices of in-laws and stepbrothers swirling around the Colonel’s wealth and birthright, we hear about Clive’s birth, childhood, and education. Born in India, Clive makes a four-month journey to England and, raised by his mother’s sister with help (or interference) from her brother, is “everything that a father’s, an uncle’s (who loves him as a father), a pastor’s, a teacher’s affection could desire.”

December: Chapters IV-VI

In this set of chapters, following the schedule on Harpers.org (which we’ve discovered is different than the one published in the book... you may find others too!), we learn greater detail about the characters to whom we’ve been introduced. The morning after the pub incident, our narrator takes us back in time, revealing more about Clive, the hero of the story, about his and Clive’s relationship, Clive’s uncles and aunts, his father’s aspiration for him, and that he has a cousin two years his junior, named Ethel.

We learn the Colonel does not hold a grudge – his wrath from the night before is gone – and he values learning over wealth and military achievement. We see the familiar theme of respectability and elements of the ‘gentleman’s code’ in both business and country life.

We read that Clive’s paternal family receives him with warmth and kindness during his short visits but, driven by wealth and acclaim as they are, forget him as soon as he leaves. The narrator also considers the motivations for her love of Clive’s maternal aunt, who is his guardian. This leads to contemplation about the consequences of war on children and families—as timely a topic then as now, with this story published during the Crimean War.

The circumstances of the Colonel’s marriage to Clive’s mother are revealed along with significant elements of his heart. Given Pyle’s illustration, this quote must be celebrated!

“If Clive had not been as fine and handsome a young lad as any in that school or country, no doubt his fond father would have been just as well pleased and endowed him with a hundred fanciful graces; but, in truth, in looks and manners he was everything which his parent could desire; and I hope the artist who illustrates this work will take care to do justice to his portrait.”

Despite this glowing account, December ends with snobbery, irreverence, and indifference from the next generation.

Learn about the Crimean War:

https://www.nps.gov/places/the-crimean-war.htm

https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/crimea_01.shtml

1854 / 2025

January: Chapters VII-IX

More information is coming soon.