The History of Pendennis

“He has confessed it to-night. He will never come back.” There came another shriek from Lady Clavering, as she flung her arms round Pen, and kissed him, and burst into tears on his shoulder. What Pen had to tell, through a multiplicity of sobs and interruptions, must be compressed briefly, for behold our prescribed limit is reached, and our tale is coming to an end.

Club world through Fotheringay, Oxbridge, journalism, Blanche intrigue, Fanny shame, and Laura settlement form a complete Bildungsroman of vanity corrected, so plot scores 88.

One fine morning in the full London season, Major Arthur Pendennis came over from his lodgings, according to his custom, to breakfast at a certain Club in Pall Mall, of which he was a chief ornament.

Major, Pen, Laura, Blanche, Warrington, and Fanny form Thackeray's second great gallery — soft egoist, worldly uncle, moral centre, coquette, sturdy friend, wronged girl — so cast scores 90.

Mr. Broadbent seems to have much eloquence and considerable reading—your friend Foker is always delightful: but your acquaintance, Mr. Bloundell, struck me as in all respects a most ineligible young man.

Seventy-six chapters dilate through club and journalism then compress on Fanny/Blanche crises; digression is structural rather than stall, so pace scores 84.

As he was one of the finest judges of wine in England, and a man of active, dominating, and inquiring spirit, he had been very properly chosen to be a member of the Committee of this Club, and indeed was almost the manager of it.

Intrusive satiric narrator anatomizes literary-gentleman vanity with cooler density than Vanity Fair's puppet-show, so prose scores 89.

Major Arthur Pendennis came over from his lodgings, according to his custom, to breakfast at a certain Club in Pall Mall, of which he was a chief ornament.

Pall Mall, Chatteris theatre, Oxbridge, magazine Bohemia, and Fairoaks map mid-Victorian England as a school for vanity, so world scores 88.

One fine morning in the full London season, Major Arthur Pendennis came over from his lodgings, according to his custom, to breakfast at a certain Club in Pall Mall, of which he was a chief ornament.

Opening on the uncle's club world before the nephew arrives frames the novel as education-by-worldliness, so hook scores 87.

She ought to have been the poor girl's defender, not her enemy: she ought to go down on her knees and ask pardon of her. I ought! I will! I am shocked at the cruelty which has been shown.

Literary-profession Bildungsroman without Romantic exceptionalism — the gentleman-writer's vanity as subject — prototypes later Künstlerroman, so innov scores 86.

What Pen had to tell, through a multiplicity of sobs and interruptions, must be compressed briefly, for behold our prescribed limit is reached, and our tale is coming to an end.

Blanche exposed, Clavering crisis absorbed, Laura/Pen settlement — moral education completed without panoramic bitterness, so ending scores 88.