Vanity Fair
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Yellowed
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
In the glittering yet morally bankrupt world of early nineteenth-century English society, two women chart wildly divergent courses through life: the scheming, brilliant Becky Sharp, a penniless governess determined to claw her way to the top by any means necessary, and her gentle, wealthy foil, Amelia Sedley, whose trusting nature makes her a perpetual victim of those around her. William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair is a sweeping satirical epic that chronicles the intertwined fates of these two women against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, exposing the hypocrisy, greed, and social ambition that underpin polite society. With razor-sharp wit and an unflinching eye, Thackeray dissects the British class system, illustrating how wealth and appearance consistently triumph over virtue and sincerity in a world he memorably subtitles A Novel Without a Hero. First published in serial form between 1847 and 1848, Vanity Fair stands as one of the great masterworks of Victorian literature, cementing Thackeray's reputation as a mordant social critic of the highest order. His prose is simultaneously comic and devastating, drawing on the picaresque tradition while anticipating the psychological realism of later novelists. The novel's enduring power lies in Becky Sharp herself — one of fiction's most audacious and unforgettable antiheroes — whose relentless ambition forces readers to question whether, in a corrupt world, her ruthlessness is villainy or simply survival. This Pan Classics edition, complete with an introduction and notes by Gilbert Phelps, makes the perfect entry point for readers ready to discover why Thackeray's portrait of human vanity remains as bracingly relevant today as when it was written.
Author: W.M. Thackeray
Format: Paperback
Genre: Classic fiction
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Yellowed
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
In the glittering yet morally bankrupt world of early nineteenth-century English society, two women chart wildly divergent courses through life: the scheming, brilliant Becky Sharp, a penniless governess determined to claw her way to the top by any means necessary, and her gentle, wealthy foil, Amelia Sedley, whose trusting nature makes her a perpetual victim of those around her. William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair is a sweeping satirical epic that chronicles the intertwined fates of these two women against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, exposing the hypocrisy, greed, and social ambition that underpin polite society. With razor-sharp wit and an unflinching eye, Thackeray dissects the British class system, illustrating how wealth and appearance consistently triumph over virtue and sincerity in a world he memorably subtitles A Novel Without a Hero. First published in serial form between 1847 and 1848, Vanity Fair stands as one of the great masterworks of Victorian literature, cementing Thackeray's reputation as a mordant social critic of the highest order. His prose is simultaneously comic and devastating, drawing on the picaresque tradition while anticipating the psychological realism of later novelists. The novel's enduring power lies in Becky Sharp herself — one of fiction's most audacious and unforgettable antiheroes — whose relentless ambition forces readers to question whether, in a corrupt world, her ruthlessness is villainy or simply survival. This Pan Classics edition, complete with an introduction and notes by Gilbert Phelps, makes the perfect entry point for readers ready to discover why Thackeray's portrait of human vanity remains as bracingly relevant today as when it was written.