Set mainly in London's bohemian and literary underworld, Pendennis is one of the earliest and greatest of the Victorian `Bildungsromanen' - introspective novels chronicling the author's growth to maturity under a thin veil of fiction. In his introduction John Sutherland considers the parallels between Thackeray's life and that of Pendennis, and examines the changes taking place in Victorian England throughout the years of the novel, particularly during the revolutionary 1840s. This book is intended for students of English Literature or the Victorian Novel from first year of University up. General readers.