A satire on the Victorian admiration for all things medieval, this early work by the author of Vanity Fair is decidedly contrary—a self-confessed "middle-aged novel" that begins where most novels end: with marriage.

Rebecca and Rowena calls into question the ending of Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, exploring the miserable marriage of Sir Wilfrid to the "icy, faultless, prim" Rowena. In an irreverent and theatrical plot, in which the dead come back to life, marriage is exposed as really quite dull, and imperialism is mocked mercilessly, Thackeray ridiculously reunites Ivanhoe with his first love.