Miss Bunion

W.M. Thackeray

1847

Hand coloured wood engraving, probably by William Linton

5¾ x 4½ inches

Illustration for Thackeray’s Mrs Perkins’s Ball, facing p.17.

Thackeray’s unkind view of a female poet, who can only aspire to the masculine domain of literature by changing herself into a man. The image of the poetess as a transvestite typifies the artist/author’s unrelenting sexism – an aspect of his writing which troubles many modern critics.

Scanned image and text by Simon Cooke.

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