CHAPTER II.
FRASER'S MAGAZINE AND PUNCH.
How Thackeray commenced his connection with _Fraser's Magazine_ I am unable to say.

We know how he had come to London with a view to a literary career, and that he had at one time made an attempt to earn his bread as a correspondent to a newspaper from Paris.

It is probable that he became acquainted with the redoubtable Oliver Yorke, otherwise Dr.
Maginn, or some of his staff, through the connection which he had thus opened with the press.

He was not known, or at any rate he was unrecognised, by _Fraser_ in January, 1835, in which month an amusing catalogue was given of the writers then employed, with portraits of them, all seated at a symposium.

I can trace no article to his pen before November, 1837, when the _Yellowplush Correspondence_ was commenced, though it is hardly probable that he should have commenced with a work of so much pretension.