Vanity Fair

Published in book form in 1848, "Vanity Fair" is a novel of early 19th-century English society by William Makepeace Thackeray and it is considered by many his masterwork. Thackeray’s previous writings had been published either unsigned or under pseudonyms, but "Vanity Fair" was the first work he published under his own name.

"Vanity Fair" follows the lives of Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley amid their friends and families during and after the Napoleonic Wars.

The novel takes its title from the place designated as the centre of human corruption in John Bunyan’s 17th-century allegory "Pilgrim’s Progress". The book is a densely populated multilayered panorama of manners and human frailties; subtitled A Novel Without a Hero, "Vanity Fair" metaphorically represents the human condition. Its characters are virtually lacking in positive qualities and are obsessed with social climbing and the acquisition of wealth.