Literary guises of Anne Isabella Thackeray, a Victorian lady and feminist

Anne Isabella Thackeray has generally been known for introductions to her father W. M. Thackeray's works. It was only in the 1980s that her own fiction came in view of the Victorian literature historians who tended to regard it as Anne's faithful following her father's steps. The purpose of the article is to give an overview of Anne Thackeray's oeuvre as well as to reveal both Victorian and feminist trends manifested in her works. Anne Thackeray is shown in her different literary guises. As a prototype of two heroines of fiction, Theo Lambert in W. M. Thackeray's "The Virginians" and Mrs. Hilbery in V. Woolfe's "Night and Day", Anne Thackeray may seem a typical Victorian lady fitting the ideal of a woman of the day due to her willingness to serve her father and the rest members of the family. As an author of both essays and fiction, Anne acts as an independent thinker willing to change the world for the better. Her belief in a woman's ability to influence the world must have led her to writing about both fictional and real young women striving for happiness. The rejection of marriage as the only way to it adds a distinct feminist note to her stories. Having published "Miss Angel", a fictionalized biography of A. Kaufmann, Anne proceeded to essays about women writers, which later made up "A Book of Sibyls", the first attempt of history of women's writing, in so many ways antedating Ellen Moers' "Literary women".