Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray
Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray
List: $29.49 | Sale: $20.65
Club: $14.74

Vanity Fair

Author: William Makepeace Thackeray

Narrator: Wanda McCaddon

Unabridged: 28 hr 42 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 06/10/2008

Categories: Fiction, Classic

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

A deliciously satirical attack on a money-mad society, Vanity Fair, which first appeared in 1847, is an immensely moral novel, and an immensely witty one. Vanity Fair features two heroines: the faithful, loyal Amelia Sedley, and the beautiful and scheming social climber Becky Sharp. It also engages a huge cast of wonderful supporting characters as the novel spins from Miss Pinkerton's academy for young ladies to affairs of love and war on the Continent to liaisons in the dazzling ballrooms of London. William Makepeace Thackeray's forte is the bon mot, and it is amply exercised in a novel filled with memorably wicked lines. Lengthy and leisurely in pace, the novel follows the adventures of Becky and Amelia as their fortunes rise and fall, creating a tale both picaresque and risque. Thackeray mercilessly skewers his society, especially the upper class, poking fun at their shallow values and pointedly jabbing at their hypocritical "morals." His weapons, however, are not fire and brimstone but an unerring eye for the absurd and a genius for observing the foibles of his age. An enduring classic, this great novel is a brilliant study in duplicity and hypocrisy—and a mirror with which to view our own times.

About William Makepeace Thackeray

Add new author biography.


Reviews

Goodreads review by emma on February 28, 2025

welcome to...JANITY FAIRBRUARY. i'm going to read this huge scary book for the next two months (i.e., january and february), one chapter a day, trying all the while not to run away in fear as per my project long classics directive. on that note, did authors from old times know it was possible to write......more

Goodreads review by Captain Sir Roddy, R.N. (Ret.) on July 09, 2024

Here I am, 54 years old, and for the very first time reading William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair. "Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero." I disagree with Thackeray. The 'Hero' of Vanity Fair is the steadfast and stalwart William Dobbin; of that there is no doubt. This novel is not the coming of......more

Goodreads review by Bionic Jean on February 05, 2025

Written in 1848, Vanity Fair is an excellent satire of English society in the early 19th Century. Thackeray states several times that it is a novel "without a hero",and at a couple of points tries to claim that Amelia, a good person but who inevitably comes across as rather wishy-washy, is the her......more

Goodreads review by Kelly on August 10, 2010

"But as we are to see a great deal of Amelia, there is no harm in saying, at the outset of our acquaintance, that she was a dear little creature. And a great mercy it is, both in life and in novels, which (and the latter especially) abound in villains of the most sombre sort that we are to have for......more

Goodreads review by Paul on December 10, 2016

1. I liked the company of Thackeray who is breezy, ebullient and cynical about everyone’s motives. And he’s very confident too. He thinks he knows everything, although there’s not a word about how the poor live here, that’s not his subject. So he’s like the mid-19th century version of Tom Wolfe or J......more