Vanity Fair

With an Introduction and Notes by Owen Knowles, University of Hull

Thackeray's upper-class Regency world is a noisy and jostling commercial fairground, predominantly driven by acquisitive greed and soulless materialism, in which the narrator himself plays a brilliantly versatile role as a serio-comic observer.

Although subtitled 'A Novel without a Hero', Vanity Fair follows the fortunes of two contrasting but inter-linked lives: through the retiring Amelia Sedley and the brilliant Becky Sharp, Thackeray examines the position of women in an intensely exploitative male world.

When 'Vanity Fair' was published in 1848, Charlotte Bronte commented: "The more I read Thackeray's works the more certain I am that he stands alone – alone in his sagacity, alone in his truth, alone in his feeling… Thackeray is a Titan."

About the Author

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811 - 1863) was an English writer. His finest work, 'Vanity Fair', brought him fame, and comparisons with Dickens. The novel has retained its perennial appeal, and is widely considered to be one of the finest written during the nineteenth century.