Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero (Bantam Classic) - Softcover

Thackeray, William Makepeace

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0553214624 ISBN 13: 9780553214628

Publisher: Bantam Classic & Loveswept, 1997

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. Called in its subtitle "A Novel Without a Hero," Vanity Fair has instead 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. 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 of both picaresque and risqué. Thackery 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 observation of 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 this title

Review:

"I do not say there is no character as well drawn in Shakespeare [as D'Artagnan]. I do say there is none that I love so wholly."
--Robert Louis Stevenson

"The lasting and universal popularity of The Three Musketeers shows that Dumas, by artlessly expressing his own nature in the persons of his heroes, was responding to that craving for action, strength and generosity which is a fact in all periods and all places."
--Andreé Maurois

Book Description:

'I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year' Vanity Fair

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam Classic & Loveswept
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0553214624
• ISBN 13: 9780553214628
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 848