About this title: VANITY FAIR, Thackeray's panoramic, satirical saga of corruption at all levels of English society, was published in 1847 but set during the Napoleonic Wars. It chronicles the lives of two women who could not be more different: Becky Sharp, an orphan whose only resources are her vast ambitions, her native wit, and her loose morals; and her schoolmate Amelia Sedley, a typically naive Victorian heroine, the pampered daughter of a wealthy family. Becky's fluctuating fortunes eventually bring her to an affair with Amelia's dissolute husband; when he is killed at Waterloo, Amelia and her child are ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Description: Good in good dust jacket. Good, In good dust jacket. 20 pts. in 19; ill.; 23 cm. Variants frm Randall's collation: Pt. XIX/XX has Imprint [B] on wrapper; title-page [A]; verso [A]; dedication [A]; page 29 contains 20 lines. read more
Description: Good. Spine is smooth. Covers show some wear at the edges and corners. Good reading copy. Binding is Mass Market Paperback. Pages tanning. Used books may have price stickers. Most orders ship on the next business day. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Penguin Books
Date Published: 1969
ISBN-13:9780140430356ISBN:0140430350
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Tight copy. Text is clean and unmarked, no stains. Leading edge of front cover and first page have been clipped. Title page and edges stamped. Cover is clean, bright and shiny with scratches, edgewear and a few creases.... Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 816 p. read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Signet Classics
Date Published: 1962
ISBN-13:9780451524898ISBN:0451524896
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 830 p. Contains: Illustrations. Signet Classics (Paperback). Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Washington Square, New York, NY, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1965
Description: Fair. 12mo-over 6¾"-7¾" tall. Solid reading copy with no tears or creases to tanned pages. Hinge and edgewear to cover, soiling to cover and page edges, owner's stamp, store stamp and initials inside front cover. SYNOPSIS: Pocket Library Edition, 5th printing, with introduction by Lionel Stevenson. "Thackeray created a gallery of unforgettable characters. Among them is one of fiction's most fascinating women-Becky Sharp...The green-eyed adventuress was so completely unscrupulous that her ... read more
Description: Good. 0143034448 Good condition Soft cover book, clean pages, some edge rub wear, some creases to spine, this book is Good! cover yellow, different than shown. Shop & Save With US. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: De Luxe Editions Club
Description: Good. No dust jacket. 379 p. possible book club edition-red boards with black spine with red and gold lettering on the spine-pages are foxed but clean, tight, and unmarked with the exception of a bookplate on the inside front board-page edges are showing age spots read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: The Heritage Press
Date Published: 1940
Description: Very Good. No marks, no writing, clean and clear text, tight binding. 1940 hardback. minor cover/edgewear, slight stains on inside front and back covers, pages starting to yellow. NO DJ. read more
"Read it slowly because you'll want to savor it. This is sharp, witty and evocative. The book centers as much on Amelia as on Becky. The main theme here is selfishness in all its destructive glory. For what is vanity but selfishness? Both Becky and Amelia are self-absorbed but only one comes out of it. Amelia is just as vain and selfish in her romantic martyrdom as Becky is in her open whoring. Becky is the adventuress, cunning and brilliant. It's amazing how Thackery creates a character you can enjoy so much without ever actually liking her. The whole book is kind of like an anti-Bunyon. Pilgrim's Regress if you will. WMT writes a morality play without the fairytale ending. Amelia gets a happy ending but not Becky. Dobbins could have been such a loathsome prig but he came out pretty well. Even the dreadful George is human. The only real caricature was Josiah but he was funny so who cares? This is a wicked good time."
"By reading "Vanity Fair", I've finally finished the assigned reading list from my 1985 college class, "History of the English Novel". I read everything else that semester, including "Wuthering Heights", "Frankenstein", "Tom Jones", "Robinson Crusoe", "Adam Bede", and probably a few others, but poor "Vanity Fair" languished unread as the school year rapidly speed by, it's sheer heft too daunting for me to even attempt.
I've had a copy of the book on my bookshelves for the last 20+ years with the plan of eventually reading it, but I forgot about it until late last year. I was enjoying a similarly weighty book (literally) about Florence Nightingale when William Thackeray appeared as a minor character who was traveling on the same ship as Florence and some relatives. I figured if I could tackle a thousand page bio of Nurse Flo then I was certainly prepared for "Vanity Fair". I even read "Middlemarch" in an attempt to warm up my brain, but VF wasn't nearly as challenging as I'd expected. My biggest obstacle was getting through the slow, lengthy "filler" or "ambiance" chapters -- they served as a reminder that novels were often published one chapter at a time, so it made financial sense for the author to drag out the story for as long as possible. I honestly think that if the book was edited today, quite a few chapters would be completely removed (to the benefit of the overall plot).
Do I think Becky Sharp was as evil as Thackeray probably wanted me to think? No. In modern times, she'd fit in perfectly with the cast of shows like "The Hills" and "Gossip Girls". I found Amelia Sedley to be pretty pathetic, though, and that might be the reaction the author was shooting for. Becky was much more entertaining than Amelia, and the chapters which revolved around Becky's machinations (with and without the knowledge of her husband), were the ones I enjoyed the most. It was interesting to read a book with no obvious hero/heroine... even Dobbin was kind of annoying.
Overall, I'm glad I read this and feel a huge burden lifted off my shoulders. Now if I could just go back and rewrite my final exam from 1985, my experience with "The History of the English Novel" will be complete."
"This was a long book! It took me forever to finish it, but it was well worth the time. My only complaints were that the author spent too much time developing characters of litte importance and that he went off on several side trips talking of things I didn't believe important to the plot. The story takes place in England in the early 1800s. The whole book is comparing English society to the popular "vanity fairs" of that era. I loved how he showed throughout the book how foolish we humans can be as we live our lives, and think our thoughts, and make our judgements. The story follows the lives of two women from their school years into middle age. We get to know both very well along with all those who share their lives - family, friends, enemies, etc. One of my favorite things in this book was how the author let us easily see how one woman was thought of as good and the other as not. However, he made us look at all sides of both and realize that we never see all of a person and many times they are not what we think - at least not all the time."
"It took me a long time to get through this book but it was so worth it. There's a reason why it's still around after 150+ years. What a great sense of humor Thackeray has! His story if full of over-the-top, self-centered characters. You don't like them but their behavior is so ridiculous you can't really despise them. And they usually get their comeuppance in the end. I love the way the narrator talks to you as if he's letting you in on the secret. And of course Becky Sharp is the woman you love to hate and hate to love. She is so awful--selfish, manipulative, lying, cheating. And yet you can't help but understand why she is the way she is. She's a victim of English society. She'll never be accepted into the upper class so she does what she has to to survive. Other than Amelia and her husband, no one is ever nice to her. I love the "happily-ever-after" ending...for a change!"
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