Vanity Fair
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4.1 • 39 Ratings
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Publisher Description
Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero is a novel Thackeray that satirizes society in early 19th-century England. As the manager of the Performance sits before the curtain on the boards and looks into the Fair, a feeling of profound melancholy comes over him in his survey of the bustling place. There is a great quantity of eating and drinking, making love and jilting, laughing and the contrary, smoking, cheating, fighting, dancing and fiddling; there are bullies pushing about, bucks ogling the women, knaves picking pockets, policemen on the look out, quacks (Other quacks, plague take them!) bawling in front of their booths, and yokels looking up at the tinselled dancers and poor old rouged tumblers, while the light fingered folk are operating upon their pockets behind.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Vanity Fair shimmers with larger-than-life characters, devious plots and crossed wires. British novelist William Makepeace Thackeray paints his two leading ladies with exquisite sensitivity. We found ourselves cheering on the scheming, narcissistic Becky Sharp as she clambers up the rungs of London society, even as we commiserated with sweet, simple-minded Amelia Sedley, who descends just as quickly. From the bloody battlefields of Waterloo to bawdy London billiard halls, Thackeray conjures up a mind-blowing array of settings. With its entertaining glimpse into the theatrics of 19th-century society, it’s easy to see why Vanity Fair has inspired countless film and TV adaptations.
Customer Reviews
Long
Author
English. 1811-1863. Born in India, his father a high ranking official of the East India Company. Sent to England at age 5 to be educated. Stopped over in St Helena en route where the imprisoned Napoleon was pointed out to him as kind of a big deal.
Summary
Thackeray's best known work Vanity Fair, subtitled A novel without a hero, was originally serialised in 19 monthly instalments 1847-48 as Pen and Pencil Sketches of English Society. It follows the lives of two young women, Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley, plus their friends, families, and acquaintances through the period of the Napoleonic wars (1803-1815) and for some years after. Amelia is from a wealthy family, good natured but a bit of a dim wit. Becky comes from more straitened circumstances but cunning as a lavatory rat with an eye to the main chance (for herself). Romances and associated fortunes come and go, and come and go, and come...you get the idea. Meanwhile, Thackeray takes the p*ss out of contemporary British society relentlessly, not just in words but also in the illustrations he drew (cartoons we'd call them nowadays). The books starts and finishes as a puppet show (a framing device for those of you into literary devices), although it's not easy to recall the details of the preface by the time you come to the coda.
Writing
Long winded, with the emphasis on long. As far as the satire goes, you probably had to be there.
Bottom line
I tried to read this book as a teenager when I was into reading the classics. I failed. This time, I made it all the way through, and was underwhelmed. Disclaimer: some skimming occurred. One hundred and eighty years on, I suspect Becky would be in her element on Married at First Sight, or The Bachelorette.