Note 26 to Chapter 2 of the author's Pegasus in Harness: Victorian Publishing and W. M. Thackeray, which University Press of Virginia published in 1992. It has been included in the Victorian Web with the kind permission of the author, who of course retains copyright.
Letters 2: 100. Thackeray probably had forgotten that he himself had once proposed "Rambles and Sketches in Old and New Paris" as a title for The Paris Sketch Book. The contract for the Ireland tour called the book "Titmarsh in Ireland " - a title proposed by Thackeray. The sequence of titles includes, in addition, "Rambles in Ireland," proposed by Chapman and Hall and temporarily acquiesced in by Thackeray (March 1843); "The Cockney in Ireland, " presumably proposed by Thackeray in the projected but apparently never written preface (April 1843); and The Irish Sketch-Book, agreed upon by both parties and actually used as the title John Gordan, p. 12, noted a fifth title, "Irish Sketches," but he cited no source, and Catherine Peters noted a sixth, "Cockney Travels in Ireland," also citing no source (Peters, p. 105).
Last modified: 4 April 2001