Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair (1847/8) is the story of English society in the Napoleonic Wars and the early nineteenth century, but not the text-book story. As Thackeray wrote, 'there is a great quantity of eating and drinking, making love and jilting, laughing and the contrary, smoking, cheating, fighting, dancing and fiddling: there are bullies pushing about, bucks ogling the women, knaves picking pockets, policemen on the look-out, quacks bawling in front of their booths, and yokels looking up at the tinselled dancers and poor old rouged tumblers'. Through this free-wheeling melée of brilliant improvisations sail Becky Sharp, one of literature's most resourceful, engaging and amoral characters, and Amelia Sedley, her less lustrous but more ambiguous foil. Their story is, in J.I.M. Stewart's words, 'a landmark in the history of English fiction'.