The Newcomes

The Newcomes, novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, first published in 24 installments from 1853 to 1855 under the title The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family, edited by “Arthur Pendennis, Esq.,” the narrator of the story. The novel was published in book form in two volumes in 1854–55.

A tale spanning decades in the lives of a well-to-do middle-class English family, The Newcomes is mainly concerned with Col. Thomas Newcome and his son Clive. The unheroic but attractive Clive falls in love with his cousin Ethel but instead marries Rose Mackenzie, who eventually dies in childbirth. The Colonel is ruined financially by the greedy, coldhearted Barnes Newcome, Ethel’s father and head of the family. The Colonel’s deathbed scene, described with deep feeling that avoids sentimentality, is one of the most famous in Victorian fiction.