Vanity Fair: A Novel

Description

‘I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year’

Becky Sharp is a poor orphan when she first makes friends with the lovely Amelia Sedley at Miss Pinkerton’s Academy for Young Ladies. She may not have the natural advantages of her companion but she more than makes up for it with her wit, charm, deviousness and determination to make a success of herself in the world, whatever the cost. Vanity Fair is the story of anti-hero Becky’s spectacular rise and fall as she gambles, manipulates and seduces her way through high society against the backdrop of Waterloo and the Napoleonic wars.

Reviews

“The best thing he ever wrote—sharp, brilliant, touching, clever, and cruel, with an unforgettable heroine.”  —Joanna Trollope, author, Marrying the Mistress

“The only English novel which…challenges comparison with War and Peace” – John Carey

“The best thing he ever wrote – sharp, brilliant, touching, clever and cruel, with an unforgettable heroine” – Joanna Trollope

“Witty, sexy, sandy-haired Becky Sharp, whose impoverished background explains her hunger for rich men and high position. She is a rebel from the very first chapter of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. Her one final act of kindness derives from her constant virtue: seeing things as they are” – Maggie Gee, Independent

“A terrific book – bold, funny, scathing and quite unpredictable” – Al Murray

“Becky Sharp may be one of literature’s great schemers, but she’s also one of its most memorable and entertaining. More rounded than almost all the simpering Victorian dolls who followed, she alone is worth the read” – The Times

Author Biography

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) was a satirist who wrote such works as Catherine, The FitzBoodle Papers, The Luck of Barry Lyndon, and The Snobs of England before he published his masterpiece, Vanity Fair, in 1847.