Barry Lyndon

As long as Lady Lyndon lived, Barry enjoyed his income, and was perhaps as happy in prison as at any period of his existence; when her Ladyship died, her successor sternly cut off the annuity, devoting the sum to charities: which, he said, would make a nobler use of it than the scoundrel who had enjoyed it hitherto.

Irish childhood through army service, Countess marriage, extravagance, Bullingdon's revenge, and Fleet Prison form a picaresque rise and fall with morally appropriate comeuppance, so plot scores 85.

Since the days of Adam, there has been hardly a mischief done in this world but a woman has been at the bottom of it. Ever since ours was a family (and that must be very NEAR Adam's time,--so old, noble, and illustrious are the Barrys, as everybody knows) women have played a mighty part with the destinies of our race.

Redmond Barry, Lady Lyndon, Bullingdon, and the early loves are typed but vividly individuated through Barry's self-serving memoir without flattening into allegory only, so cast scores 87.

During the five years which the war (afterwards called the Seven Years' War) had now lasted, had so exhausted the males of his principality, that the fields remained untilled: even the children of twelve years old were driven off to the war.

Eighteen chapters of episodic adventure — duels, battles, card tables, estate management — maintain picaresque momentum with set-piece setbacks rather than unified tragic arc, so pace scores 86.

I presume that there is no gentleman in Europe that has not heard of the house of Barry of Barryogue, of the kingdom of Ireland, than which a more famous name is not to be found in Gwillim or D'Hozier.

Thackeray's ironic first-person prose — "Since the days of Adam," "the gentleman I was born" — renders roguery with comic self-exposure, so prose scores 88.

I presume that there is no gentleman in Europe that has not heard of the house of Barry of Barryogue, of the kingdom of Ireland, than which a more famous name is not to be found in Gwillim or D'Hozier.

Ireland, Seven Years' War camps, Spa gaming tables, and Castle Lyndon map eighteenth-century Europe as a stage for adventurers, though less topographically dense than Vanity Fair's England, so world scores 84.

Since the days of Adam, there has been hardly a mischief done in this world but a woman has been at the bottom of it.

Ch.I's roguish preamble establishes the unreliable narrator before the first duel — inviting in audacity rather than sympathy, so hook scores 83.

His autobiography, MEMOIRES ECRIT PAR LUI MEME (in twelve volumes), has been described as 'unmatched as a self-revelation of scoundrelism.'

The memoir of an unrepentant scoundrel narrated without authorial condemnation — Thackeray's precursor to the anti-hero novel — anticipates modern unreliable-narrator fiction, so innov scores 90.

The estate has vastly improved under his Lordship's careful management. The trees in Hackton Park are all about forty years old, and the Irish property is rented in exceedingly small farms to the peasantry; who still entertain the stranger with stories of the daring and the devilry, and the wickedness and the fall of Barry Lyndon.

Fleet Prison, the annuity cut off, Bullingdon's revenge, and the Tiptoffs inheriting form morally appropriate comeuppance without sentimental redemption, so ending scores 86.