Men's Wives

Men’s Wives (1852) is a novel by William Makepeace Thackeray. Divided into three sections—“The Ravenswing”; “Mr. and Mrs. Frank Berry”; and “Dennis Haggarty’s Wife”—Men’s Wives satirizes the married lives of England’s elite.

In “Ravenswing,” a novella, Captain Walker meets a beautiful young woman named Morgiana Crump. The daughter of an eccentric hotelier and a retired actress, Miss Crump is being prepared for marriage by her overeager parents. Struggling to compete with the countless suitors constantly crowding Miss Crump, Walker, an officer and a gentlemen, grows progressively disheartened. “Mr. and Mrs. Frank Berry” is a two-part story following one man from youth to adulthood. A fighter in his schoolboy days, Mr. Frank Berry is now a married man. When a chance encounter in Versailles reunites him with some old friends, however, his wife begins to fear that her husband is not yet ready to settle down. “Dennis Haggarty’s Wife” is a short story tracing the journey from repulsion to marriage between a snobbish protestant Irishwoman and the Irishman she marries despite his Catholic heritage. Throughout Men’s Wives, a humorous collection of stories on marriages mostly disastrous, Thackeray effectively satirizes the lives and loves of his nation’s elite.

With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of William Makepeace Thackeray’s Men’s Wives is a classic of English literature reimagined for modern readers.