Early on in his career, (while he was still writing for periodicals like Fraser's Magazine) William Makepeace Thackeray wrote under a variety of pseudonyms, including Charles James Yellowplush, Michael Angelo Titmarsh, and George Savage Fitz-Boodle. Which explains part of the title of this book and several others in Thackeray's oeuvre. But it doesn't explain Thackeray's wit, nor the sharpness the turns of phrase with which he needled nineteenth-century Britain. Thackeray went on to write such famous novels as Vanity Fair, Pendennis, The Newcomes, and The Adventures of Philip, but in many ways, his best is here in his early work.