Thackeray was born into a comfortably secure upper—middle—class family，and brought up to expect the leisured life of “gentleman However，partly though bad luck and bad financial(財政的)advice，partly through his own profligacy(荒廢)in early youth—he was Cambridge and for some years afterwards a compulsive(上癮的)gambler—he had been left with nothing to depend on but his brains and energy．He dreamed of writing a great novel；but he realized that while he dreamed and wasted time．writers whom he considered to be nobodies，such as Bulwer－Lytton，were writing best sellers，

Writing had not been his first choice of profession．To please his mother he spent some months，studying law，but his earliest wish was to be a painter．He studied art in London and Paris before deciding that his talent was too small for him to be anything but an amateur(業(yè)余的)painter，though he continued to draw professionally，and illustrated(給·…··畫插圖)most of his own novels  He then turned to journalism．In 1836，while he was still struggling to make his  way，he married “penniless girl of eighteen，strongly against his mother’s will

    With considerable courage．Thackeray began to make a living for his growing family from various contributions to any newspapers and magazines that would take his work often he did not know where the next five pounds was coming from Isabella Thackeray gave birth to three daughters，the second of whom died as a child，hut after the birth of the third，in 1840，she became incurably mad．a(chǎn)nd had to be cared fat away from her family for the rest of her long life—she outlived her husband by over thirty years．

    This tragedy deeply affected Thackeray It was，too，an extra financial load．a(chǎn)nd for some years he was forced to part with his daughters，who were brought up by his mother in France。while he struggled to make a living in London，still chiefly by Journalism．His chances as a novelist seemed poor: his short novel Barry Lyndan，published serially in Fraser’s Magazine in 1844．made so little impression oil the public that it was not published in book form until twelve years later．

68．Thackeray was born into a family      ．

    A that had bad luck              B，that he could not rely on

    C that was quite rich            D．that expected him to be a writer

69．What did his mother want him to study?

    A．Art              B，Law             C Writer        D．Journalism

70．After he got married，Thackeray made a living by          ．

    A writing best sellers                    B drawing and illustrating his own novels

    C· publishing a book which made him famous  D writing for newspapers and magazines

7I．Because of financial difficulty，Thackeray had to          

    A．publish his novel in book form 12 years later

    B．publish Barry Lyndon as a series in a magazine

    C，send his children to his mother

D make a living by writing novels    ．