The History of Henry Esmond, Esq., a Colonel in the Service of Her Majesty Queen Anne

Thackeray set this memoir-style novel in the reign of Queen Anne and wrote it in a careful pastiche of early eighteenth-century prose. Henry Esmond, an orphan taken in by the Castlewood family, grows up loyal to them even after he learns that he, not his patrons, is the family’s rightful heir. He keeps the secret, serves under Marlborough in the wars against France, and edges into the Jacobite plots to restore the Stuarts. Running through it all is his long, painful devotion to the beautiful and heartless Beatrix, and his quieter bond with her mother, Rachel. Thackeray thought it his most finished book, and readers have long admired its restraint and its melancholy sense of how love and history disappoint us. Free to read here as a PDF and EPUB edition.