While the 20th century audience may recognize William Makepeace Thackeray as one of the 19th century's most interesting authors, very few know of his daughter. Winifred Gerin is the only biographer so far to recognize Anne Thackeray Ritchie as an author in her own right. The 1981 biography offers an in-depth and up-close look at Thackeray's world, including many familiar faces such as Tennyson, Dickens, Carlyle, Ruskin, George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Darwin, Virginia Woolf (Anne's niece), and even an eyewitness account of Chopin's last days in Paris. Anne Thackeray was the eyes and ears of Victorian London, and through Gerin's thorough research and plentiful use of letters and recorded conversations, the average reader comes that much closer to getting a true glimpse of the literary and art scene of Victorian Britain.