Vanity Fair (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

~ (Author), John Carey (Editor) "While the present century was in its teens, and on one sun-shiny morning in June, there drove up to the great iron gate of Miss..." (more)
Key Phrases: green silk purse, Sir Pitt, Miss Crawley, Miss Sharp (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Edited by John Carey.

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. John Carey is Professor of English at Oxford University. He has written on Dickens and Thackeray.

Product Details

• Paperback: 912 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (April 29, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0141439831
• ISBN-13: 978-0141439839
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 5.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #322,778 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #6 in	Books > Literature & Fiction > Authors, A-Z > ( T ) > Thackeray, William Makepeace
  #7 in	Books > Literature & Fiction > British > Classics > Thackeray, William Makepeace

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

110 of 118 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars greed and more..., July 22, 2004

By	marzipan "panchild" (Greenwich, CT United States) - See all my reviews

I first read this novel twenty-five years ago, and while I found it funny and excellent entertainment at that time, I didn't realize that it is also a very great book. Now I do.

Readers who've found the novel too long are, I suspect, not regular readers of Victorian novels, which were traditionally published in newspapers, bit by bit. They're always long--that's their distinction from modern novels. More than most however, Vanity Fair opens with a bang, and from the first page on through more than 800, I found it hard to put down.

Through the cast of characters we see for ourselves the pervasive greed and hypocrisy of the 19th century British Empire. Jos Sedley, the Ex-collecter of Bogley Walla, the unfortunate Rawdon Crawley, George Osborne and the immoral, resourceful Becky Sharpe are some of the most vivid characters in English writing. The narrator's voice is perfect--though hardly appealing. It's not sentimental. The "objectivity" of a journalist's timidly expressed irony feeds into the reader's need to feel smug -- so that when shocking moments come (and they sure do) we are stunned. The narrator's voice here is much more inventive than one realizes immediately. In this and many other ways Thackeray's story-telling isn't typical of Victorian novelists--Eliot or Dickens for example. In the works of those authors we always know just what moral position the narrator has. (I should mention that I also finished re-reading Middlemarch before re-reading Vanity Fair.) Comparing the grand stateliness of George Eliot with Thackeray's voice made me see just what a tricky work of art Vanity Fair is. But Thackeray, too, makes his story come to life. The description of the Battle of Waterloo is one of the most brilliant things I've ever read. It's hard to believe that he wasn't there.

In the edition I read I found that C.L.R. James, the left-wing Trinidadian author and historian--an author I admire and enjoy reading, began reading Vanity Fair at the age of eight, and re-read it regularly throughout his long life. He claims to have learned more about the minds of white colonial empire-builders from this original and epic work than any history he read. Interesting...

57 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars All's fair in love and "Vanity", February 9, 2005

By	E. A Solinas "ea_solinas" (MD USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Greed, gold-digging and deception sit at the heart of "Vanity Fair." It's no joke that it's subtitled "a novel without a hero" -- William Makepeace Thackeray mercilessly skewered the pretentions and flaws of the upper class all throughout it. The result is a gloriously witty social satire.

It opens with two young women departing from a ladies' academy: dull, sweet Amelia (rich) and fiery sharp-witted Rebecca (poor). Becky Sharp is a relentless social climber, and her first effort to rise "above her station" is by trying to get Amelia's brother to marry her -- an effort thwarted by Amelia's fiancee. So instead she gets married to another family's second son, Rawdon Crawley.

Unfortunately, both young couples quickly get disinherited and George is killed. But Becky is determined to live the good life she has worked and married for -- she obtains jewels and money from admiring gentlemen, disrupting her marriage. But a little thing like a tarnished reputation isn't enough to keep Becky down...

"Vanity Fair" is actually a lot more complex than that, with dozens of little subplots and complicated character relationships. Reading it a few times is necessary to really absorb all of it, since it is not just a look at the two women in the middle of the book, but at the upper (and sometimes lower) social strata of the nineteenth century.

The main flaw of the book is perhaps that it sprawls too much -- there's always a lot of stuff going on, not to mention a huge cast of characters, and Thackeray sometimes drops the ball when it comes to the supporting characters and their little plots. It takes a lot of patience to absorb all of this. However... it's worth it.

Like most nineteenth-century writers, Thackeray had a very dense, formal writing style -- but once you get used to it, his writing becomes insanely funny. Witticisms and quips litter the pages, even if you don't pick them all up at once. At first Thackeray seems incredibly cynical (Becky's little schemes almost always pay off), but taken as a social satire, it's easier to understand why he was so cynical about the society of the time.

Becky Sharp is the quintessential anti-heroine -- she's very greedy and cold, yet she's also so smart and determined that it's hard not to have a grudging liking for her. Certainly life hasn't been fair for her. Next to Becky, a goody-goody character like Amelia is pretty boring, and even the unsubtle George can't measure up to Becky.

To sum up "Vanity Fair": think a period soap opera with a heavy dose of social commentary. In other words, it doesn't get much better than this, Thackeray's masterpiece.

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Vanity Fair prys into the yearnings of an era and a culture., March 25, 2004

By	"bignami-finn" (San Francisco) - See all my reviews

William Makepeace Thackeray was a wonderfully insightful and intelligent rabble-rouser. He speaks in this tale with a very gossipy tone and spectacular wit and with elements of underlying societal truths within his text. As a modern philosopher of his own society during the Victorian era, Thackeray is utterly charming.

Vanity Fair must have been a phenomenon not unlike `Sex and the City' which debuted some years ago on HBO television. Vanity Fair, when it was released, was done in "monthly numbers" for over one and one-half years in periodicals. Readers were drawn into the lives of Becky and Amelia and had no quips about producing their hard-earned pounds to read of what would ultimately become of the two fascinating girls. Purposely suspenseful plots "hooked" the London public. Thackeray became a star amongst the literary supreme of London. By inserting himself and his thoughts and views of England, the nature of man, war, poverty and the boastful aristocratic society into the work, he presents himself and his own opinions to the world through Vanity Fair.

This novel is as important today as it was when it was released, especially for one studying historical life as it was from day to day. We are given plain viewpoints of somewhat normal, fashionable, destitute and poverty striken women of the era. Very interesting, always charming, a splendid read--albeit a very long one.