Rebecca and Rowena (Heftet (myke permer))

Most famous for Vanity Fair, his first major novel, William Makepeace Thackeray was an important literary figure in nineteenth-century England, both as an author and as a journalist and columnist. Matthew Sweet, author of Inventing The Victorians, has been film critic of The Independent on Sunday, a columnist for The Big Issue, and a director's assistant at the RSC.

Rebecca and Rowena calls into question the ending of Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, exploring the miserable marriage of Sir Wilfrid to the 'icy, faultless, prim' Rowena. In an irreverent and theatrical plot, in which the dead come back to life, marriage is exposed as really quite dull, and imperialism is mocked mercilessly, Thackeray ridiculously reunites Ivanhoe with his first love, Rebecca, claiming they were wrongly separated in the earlier novel.

Foreword by Matthew Sweet; Rebecca and Rowena; Biographical note