William Makepeace Thackeray

The Luck of Barry Lyndon is a picaresque novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, first published in serial form in 1844, about a member of the Irish gentry trying to become a member of the English aristocracy. Thackeray, who based the novel on the life and exploits of the Anglo-Irish rakehell and fortune-hunter Andrew Robinson Stoney, later reissued it under the title The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq..

The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq

Rose Stanley

Me: finishes reading Barry Lyndon
Me: looks up the wikipedia page for the novel and finds out is based on the life of a real person
Me: looks up that real person and finds out what he did to his wife
Me: https://media1.giphy.com/media/LZQsVA...

This was a deeply unpleasant book to read, which was probably the point but dear lord, the misogyny and the anti-Irish jibes and the snobbery and the all-round hideousness of the narrator, ugh ugh ugh. What gets me is that Redmond Barry is a TONED DOWN version of the real-life asshat on whom he is modelled *shudder*

The wife had the last laugh in real life though, so not everything is terrible.

The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq

Reviews