Catherine: A Story

Name: Catherine: A Story
Author: William Makepeace Thackeray

by William Makepeace Thackeray

Pages: about 245
Category: Literature & Fiction
Language: English
Reading time: 4.5 h at 250 wpm

Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 2.5 h at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

8. Enumerates the accomplishments of Master Thomas Billings--introduces Brock as Doctor Wood--and announces the execution of Ensign MacShane.
9. Interview between Count Galgenstein and Master Thomas Billings, when he informs the Count of his parentage.
10. Showing how Galgenstein and Mrs. Cat recognise each other in Marylebone Gardens--and how the Count drives her home in his carrige.
The story of “Catherine,” which appeared in Fraser's Magazine in 1839-40, was written by Mr. Thackeray, under the name of Ikey Solomons, Jun., to counteract the injurious influence of some popular fictions of that day, which made heroes of highwaymen and burglars, and created a false sympathy for the vicious and criminal.
With this purpose, the author chose for the subject of his story a woman named Catherine Hayes, who was burned at Tyburn, in 1726, for the deliberate murder of her husband, under very revolting circumstances. Mr. Thackeray's aim obviously was to describe the career of this wretched woman and her associates with such fidelity to truth as to exhibit the danger and folly of investing such persons with heroic and romantic qualities.
At that famous period of history, when the seventeenth century (after a deal of quarrelling, king-killing, reforming, republicanising, restoring, re-restoring, play-writing, sermon-writing, Oliver-Cromwellising, Stuartising, and Orangising, to be sure) had sunk into its grave, giving place to the lusty eighteenth; when Mr. Isaac Newton was a tutor of Trinity, and Mr. Joseph Addison Commissioner of Appeals; when the presiding genius that watched over the destinies of the French nation had played out all the best cards in his hand, and his adversaries began to pour in their trumps; when there were two kings in Spain employed perpetually in running away from one another; when there was a queen in England, with such rogues for Ministers as have never been seen, no, not in our own day; and a General, of whom it may be severely argued, whether he was the meanest miser or the greatest hero in the world; when Mrs.

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Catherine: A Story

From the opening

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