Vanity Fair

A Novel Without a Hero

Paperback

English language

Published Aug. 1, 2015 by Oxford World's Classics (Oxford University Press).

ISBN:
978-0-19-872771-2
Copied ISBN!

View on OpenLibrary

View on Inventaire

4 stars (1 review)

Vanity Fair is an English novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, which follows the lives of Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley amid their friends and families during and after the Napoleonic Wars. It was first published as a 19-volume monthly serial from 1847 to 1848, carrying the subtitle Pen and Pencil Sketches of English Society, which reflects both its satirisation of early 19th-century British society and the many illustrations drawn by Thackeray to accompany the text. It was published as a single volume in 1848 with the subtitle A Novel without a Hero, reflecting Thackeray's interest in deconstructing his era's conventions regarding literary heroism. It is sometimes considered the "principal founder" of the Victorian domestic novel.The story is framed as a puppet play, and the narrator, despite being an authorial voice, is somewhat unreliable. The serial was a popular and critical success; the novel is now considered a classic and has …

9 editions