Product Description

Vanity Fair, Thackeray's panoramic, satirical saga of corruption at all levels of English society, was published in 1847 but set during the Napoleonic Wars. It chronicles the lives of two women who could not be more different: Becky Sharp, an orphan whose only resources are her vast ambitions, her native wit, and her loose morals; and her schoolmate Amelia Sedley, a typically naive Victorian heroine, the pampered daughter of a wealthy family. Becky's fluctuating fortunes eventually bring her to an affair with Amelia's dissolute husband; when he is killed at Waterloo, Amelia and her child are left penniless, while Becky and her husband Rawdon Crawley rise in the world, managing to lead a high life in London solely on the basis of their shrewdness. (The chapter entitled "How to Live on Nothing" is a classic.) Thackeray's subtitle, "A Novel Without a Hero," is understating the case; his view of humanity in this novel is distinctly bleak and deliberately antiheroic. Critics of the time misunderstood the book, decrying it as (among other things) vicious, vile, and odious. But VANITY FAIR has endured as one of the great comic novels of all time, and a landmark in the history of realism in fiction.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9965 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 688 pages

About the Author
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) was born and educated to be a gentleman but gambled away much of his fortune while at Cambridge. He trained as a lawyer before turning to journalism. He was a regular contributor to periodicals and magazines and Vanity Fair was serialised in Punch in 1847-8.

Customer Reviews

Read more Thackeray!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I was disappointed to read the negative 1 star review that previously had been written about Vanity Fair. Personally I really enjoyed this book, yes it is long, but DO NOT be put off by the length. This is a worthwhile read that is charming and funny. Sadly, Thackeray is not as well read these days as the likes of his contemporaries such as Dickens, but that certainly does not make him an inferior writer. This is a great pageturner that I would definitley recommend reading. Set against the backdrop of the napoleonic wars, the story concentrates on the domestic rather than social ramifications of the war. I think Thackeray writes female charaters very well and the way he occasionally writes as if talking and guiding you through the book is charming.
A must-read!!!!

Absorbing, timeless classic
Although published in 1847, Vanity Fair has the hallmark of all timeless classics - its depiction of human relationships still rings true today. Although Becky Sharp is most often remembered, there are actually two main female characters. Becky's friend Amelia is in love with George Osborne; but he is prepared to betray her devotion with the flirtatious Becky. In his turn Captain Dobbin is devoted to Amelia - but she scorns him even after George Osborne, then her husband, is killed in battle.

Becky wheedles her way into marriage with the ne'er do well Rawdon Crawley, and together they sponge and fawn on society to scrape a precarious living. Finally even Crawley leaves Becky. Ironically it is she who finally opens Amelia's eyes to the failings of her dead, long-idolised husband, leaving her free to marry the patient Dobbin.

William Makepeace Thackeray has an unfailing insight into the minds of lovers, both male and female, which is why this novel is still enjoyable to read

"There are two parties to a love transaction: the one who loves and the other who condescends to be so treated".

"Oh, these women! They nurse and cuddle their presentiments, and make darlings of their ugliest thoughts, as they do of their deformed children"

"Did she own to herself how different the real man was from that superb...hero whom she had worshipped? It requires many, many years - and a man must be very bad indeed - before a woman's pride and vanity will let her own to such a confession.

"remorse is the least active of all a man's moral senses - the very easiest to be deadened when wakened: and in some never wakened at all"

"before a man goes to the devil himself, he sends plenty of other souls hither"

Too long and too boring
I was expecting this book to be as interesting as Pride and Prejudice was. P&P was one of the best books I ever read, but Vanity Fair was a huge let down. The book was so slow, long and boring that I couldn't complete it. Incidentally, a BBC adaptation of this book, which was aired after the famous BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, did very badly in the ratings and has never been heard from since. That does not surprise me because the adaptation was pretty close to the book.