The Virginians

By William Makepeace Thackeray

Subjects: Brothers, Fiction, family life, general, United states, history, french and indian war, 1755-1763, fiction, Twins, Brothers, fiction, Virginia, fiction, Fiction, historical, general, Fiction, family life, Inheritance and succession, United States French and Indian War, 1755-1763, Fiction, Great britain, fiction, Americans, History, Twins, fiction

Description: In a late Eighteenth Century setting, between fashionable London and backward Virginia, two twin brothers from the nobility spend their formative period trying to flee a domineering dowager mother in different ways--the older a saturnine, melancholy character, the younger an easy going type. Both, in their own way, succeed; but both reach old age feeling themselves equally swindled. The usual Thackeray touch of good humoured aristocratic melancholy aimed at bourgeois philisteism.