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Vanity Fair is perhaps Thackeray’s most famous novel. First serialized over the course of 19 volumes in Punch Magazine and first printed as a single volume in 1849, the novel cemented Thackeray’s literary fame and kept him busy with frequent revisions and even lecture circuits.
The story is framed as a puppet play, narrated by an unreliable narrator, that presents the story of Becky Sharp and Emmy Sedley and the people in their lives as they struggle through the Napoleonic Wars. The story itself, like many other Thackeray novels, is a satire of the lives of the Victorian English of a certain class. Thackeray packed the novel with allusions, many of which were difficult even for his contemporary readers; part of the heavy revisions he later made were making the allusions more accessible to his evolving audience.
As part of his satirical bent, Thackeray made a point to make each character flawed, so that there are no “heroes” in the book—hence the subtitle “A Novel Without a Hero.” Thackeray’s goal was not only to entertain, but to instruct; to that end, he wanted the reader to look within themselves after finishing the unhappy conclusion, in which there’s no hint as to how society might be able to improve on the evils shadowed in the events of novel.
Vanity Fair received glowing praise by its critical contemporaries, and remains a popular book well into modern times, having been adapted repeatedly for film, radio, and television.
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Subjects
Social life and customs, Women, Fiction, Waterloo, Battle of (Belgium : 1815) fast (OCoLC)fst01172689, Married women, Waterloo, Battle of, Waterloo, Belgium, 1815, Female friendship, British, Social classes, England, fiction, Married people, fiction, Friendship, fiction, British and irish fiction (fictional works by one author), London (england), fiction, Fiction, humorous, Thackeray, william makepeace, 1811-1863, Governesses, Fiction, satire, Manners and customs, Waterloo (Belgium), Battle of, 1815, English, Wives, Fiction, humorous, general, Fiction in English, Bataille de Waterloo, Waterloo, Belgique, 1815, Romans, nouvelles, Britanniques, Amitié féminine, Classes sociales, Femmes mariées, Manners and customs in fiction, 18.05 English literature, Waterloo, Battle of (Belgium : 1815) in literature, British in fiction, Female friendship in fiction, Waterloo, Battle of, Waterloo, Belgium, 1815 in fiction, Social classes in fiction, Married women in fiction, England in fiction, Governesses in fiction, General, Classics, FICTION / Classics, Photoplay editions, History, Snobs and snobbishness, Upper class, Children's fiction, Great britain, fiction, Fiction, romance, regency, Suo xie ben, Chang pian xiao shuo, Europe, fiction, Fiction, general, Collected works (single author, multi-form), Literary criticism, European, Thackeray, william makepeace , 1811-1863, Sharp, becky, Women--england--fiction, Waterloo, battle of, waterloo, belgium, 1815--fiction, British--europe--fiction, Female friendship--fiction, Social classes--fiction, Married women--fiction, Pr5618 .a1 1994, 823/.8Places
London, England, Europe, London (England), Ying guoTimes
Regency Era, Jin daiShowing 11 featured editions. View all 200 editions?
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Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero
2015, Oxford World's Classics (Oxford University Press)
Paperback
in English
0198727712 9780198727712
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Vanity Fair: a novel without a hero
1972, Pocket Books
in English
- Enriched classics ed.
0671481193 9780671481193
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Book Details
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First Sentence
"WHILE the present century was in its teens, and on one sunshiny morning in June, there drove up to the great iron gate of Miss Pinkerton's academy for young ladies, on Chiswick Mall, a large family coach, with two fat horses in blazing harness, driven by a fat coachman in a three-cornered hat and wig, at the rate of four miles an hour."
Work Description
No one is better equipped in the struggle for wealth and worldly success than the alluring and ruthless Becky Sharp, who defies her impoverished background to clamber up the class ladder. Her sentimental companion Amelia, however, longs only for caddish soldier George. As the two heroines make their way through the tawdry glamour of Regency society, battles - military and domestic - are fought, fortunes made and lost. The one steadfast and honourable figure in this corrupt world is Dobbin with his devotion to Amelia, bringing pathos and depth to Thackeray's gloriously satirical epic of love and social adventure.
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