Vanity Fair, by
William Makepeace Thackeray, is part of the
Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the
student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of
Barnes & Noble
Classics:
New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and
endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions
to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to
superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and
literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
“I think I could be a good woman, if I had five thousand a year,” observes beautiful and clever Becky Sharp, one of the wickedest—and most appealing—women in all of literature. Becky is just
one of the many fascinating figures that populate
William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel
Vanity Fair, a wonderfully satirical panorama of upper-middle-class life and manners in
London at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Scorned for her lack of money and breeding, Becky must use all her wit, charm and considerable sex appeal to escape her drab destiny as a governess. From London’s ballrooms to the
battlefields of Waterloo, the bewitching Becky works her wiles on a gallery of memorable characters, including her lecherous employer, Sir Pitt, his rich sister, Miss Crawley, and Pitt’s
dashing son, Rawdon, the first of Becky’s misguided sexual entanglements.
Filled with hilarious dialogue and superb characterizations,
Vanity Fair is a richly entertaining comedy that asks the reader, “Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his
desire? or, having it, is satisfied?”
Features more than 100 illustrations drawn by Thackeray himself for the initial publication.
Nicholas Dames is Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, and is the author of Amnesiac Selves: Nostalgia, Forgetting, and British
Fiction, 1810–1870, and other commentary on nineteenth-century British and French fiction.
