The History of Henry Esmond

The History of Henry Esmond, Esq.: A Colonel in the Service of Her Majesty, Queen Anne is an historical novel by Thackeray, in which Henry Esmond tells his own story as a memoir. While the author credits state, "Written By Himself" it is clearly Thackeray's authorship, and a fine example of a Victorian historical novel with interwoven events and characters, both real and imagined, from 17th- and 18th-century England. Oscar Wilde observed: "Thackeray's Esmond is a beautiful work of art because he wrote it to please himself."