Abstract
If one agrees that a major premise of literary criticism is that the test of a literary work is Its ability to be universally accepted throughout the ages, then it would appear that the works of William Makepeace Thackeray have not risen to the test, for anyone who studies the nineteenth century novel is acutely aware of the shift in Thackeray*s popularity from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. Thackeray is viewed by the modern critic with dissatisfaction, and anyone who writes on Thackeray immediately finds himself on the defensive.