Note 34 to Chapter 3 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.
Sutherland's assessment of Thackeray's attitude toward the financial arrangements for the book seems based on the assumption that £1,200 for Esmond was only half as much as the £2,400 for Pendennis (Sutherland, Novelists, p. 107), but it had taken Thackeray twenty seven months to write Pendennis,while he projected only seven or eight months for Esmond. Thackeray probably, then, did not see Esmond from the time of signing the contract as a work done for art's sake rather than for money: he must instead have thought he was embarking on the best deal he had ever bad. However, another way to assess Thackeray's income from the novel is to figure the rate per page. Had Esmond been printed in the same format as Pendennis, it would have been just under 400 pages compared tojust under 700 for the larger book. By that measure, Thackeray was slightly underpaid by Smith.
Last modified: 4 April 2001