Note 52 to Chapter 5 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.
That Thackeray was often barely ahead of his printer is on record. Gordon Ray wrote: "Anny and Minny ... were accustomed to the sight of 'the Printers devil waiting downstairs for copy.' Only when he was late with his number of Vanity Fair or Pendennis did he become preoccupied. 'Towards the end of the month... I get so nervous that I don't speak to anybody scarcely, and once actually got up in the middle of the night and came down & wrote in my night-shimee' " (Ray, Wisdom, p. 16). Henry Vizetelly, writing of Vanity Fair, said, "I know perfectly well that, after the publication commenced, much of the remainderof the work was written under pressure from the printer, and not unfrequently the final installment of 'copy,' needed to fill the customary thirty-two pages, was penned while the printer's boy was waiting in the hall at Young-street" (Vizetelly, p. 28). James T. Fields said Thackeray "liked to put off the inevitable chapters till the last moment" and told the well-known story of the author holding up one of his own parties while he was finishing an installment for the printers (Fields, pp. 17-18). This may have been an embellishment, but the bibliographical evidence does not contradict him. Furthermore, when Thackeray on 17 Sept. 1849 "became suddenly ill" (Ray, Wisdom, p. 87), he had not finished writing the October number, which his publishers surely were anxious to receive on time since it would complete volume 1. As it was, Thakeray's habit of staying only a half step in front of the printer caused a three-month delay.
Last modified: 4 April 2001