"Pendennis" follows "Pen" through his West Country upbringing to his debt-bilking sojourn at "Oxbridge University" (Thackeray himself spent five unproductive terms at Cambridge), his life as a literary man about town in the London of the early 1840s, his writing of a best-selling novel called "Walter Lorraine, " and his eventual marriage to his milksop cousin Laura.

WSJ: Book Review: Pendennis | New Grub Street | Keep the Aspidistra Flying | Books Do Furnish a Room | My Life Closed Twice