ABSTRACT
Thackeray’s amusing parodic trifle ‘Cabbages’ was written when its author was still a schoolboy at Charterhouse 1 and shows signs of the talent for burlesque which was to be a key part of the adult writer’s work. Its formal model is Letitia Elizabeth Landon’s ‘Violets’, which was published in The Improvisatrice and Other Poems (1824). Magazine publication apart, ‘Cabbages’ was first published in 1899 in The Life of Thackeray by ‘Lewis Melville’ (L. S. Benjamin). The Improvisatrice is an uneven collection 2 and Thackeray’s poem, which employs the time-honoured method of burlesque substitution, implies that ‘Violets’ is little more than overblown and mawkish fustian. 3 ‘Melville’ reprints the formal model next to its parody in order to heighten the mirth.
