William Makepeace Thackeray, (born July 18, 1811, Calcutta, Indiadied Dec. 24, 1863, London, Eng.), English novelist whose reputation rests chiefly on Vanity Fair (184748), a novel of the Napoleonic period in England, and The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. (1852), set in the early 18th century. *** Fyodor Dostoevsky (11 November 1821 9 February 1881) was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist and philosopher. Dostoevsky's literary works explore human psychology in the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmospheres of 19th-century Russia, and engage with a variety of philosophical and religious themes. Many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest psychologists in world literature. *** Gustave Flaubert began his literary career at school, his first published work appearing in a little review, Le Colibri, in 1837. In November 1841 Flaubert was enrolled as a student at the Faculty of Law in Paris. At age 22, however, he was recognized to be suffering from a nervous disease that was taken to be epilepsy, although the essential symptoms were absent. This made him give up the study of law, with the result that henceforth he could devote all his time to literature