Vanity Fair (Collins Classics)

A masterpiece of social satire, featuring one of literature’s best-loved characters, Becky Sharp.Ruthless social climber and irrepressible anti-hero Becky Sharp will do anything to raise her position in Society, from impoverished orphan to woman of means. Clever, lively and resourceful, Becky is the total opposite of her naive and sentimental schoolmate Amelia Sedley, a pampered yet good-natured girl from a wealthy family. As both women pursue love and life in London, against the background of the Napoleonic Wars, Thackeray paints a vivid portrait of decadent Regency England and satirises its corruption and flaws to delightful effect.

Literature & Fiction

THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE

British & Irish

William Collins

The most remarkable thing about Vanity Fair is the absorbing interest it still has for readers a full century after its first appearance.

Vanity Fair

Random House, Inc.

"I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year." Becky Sharp is a poor orphan when she first makes friends with the lovely Amelia Sedley at Miss Pinkerton’s Academy for Young Ladies. She may not have the natural advantages of her companion but she more than makes up for it with her wit, charm, deviousness, and determination to make a success of herself whatever the cost. The story of Becky’s spectacular rise and fall sees her gamble, manipulate, and seduce her way through high society and the Napoleonic wars.

Vanity Fair (Vintage Classics)

Genre Fiction

Vintage Classics

A dispossessed eighteenth-century Irish nobleman uses blackmail, bribery, and other underhanded devices to intimidate a wealthy widow into marrying him and relinquishing control of her wealth

The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq.

Penguin??Books

Relates the misadventures that befell the court of Paflagonia when the Fairy Blackstick cast her magic spells

The Rose and the Ring: or The hist Prince Giglio Prince Bulbo Fireside Pantomime for grt Small chldr (Puffin Classics)

Children's Books

Puffin

Photographs, articles, poems, and short stories from the popular periodical capture the events of these two decades

Literary

Penguin Classics

'What spectacle is more August than that of a great king in exile? Who is more worthy of respect than a brave man in misfortune'? When "Henry Esmond" appeared in 1852, noted writers and critics of the time acclaimed it as the best historical novel ever written. Set in the reign of Queen Anne, the story follows the troubled progress of a gentleman and an officer in Marlborough's army, as he painfully wrestles with an emotional allegiance to the old Tory-Catholic England until, disillusioned, he comes to terms of a kind with the Whiggish-Protestant future. This change also entails a very uncomfortable switch in his affections. The love story of Henry Esmond is charged with sombre, unconscious emotions, yet is skilfully embedded into historical events which are convincing but never too prominent.

The History of Henry Esmond, Esq.

Written immediately after "Vanity Fair", "Pendennis" has a similar atmosphere of brooding disillusion, tempered by the most jovial of wits. But here Thackeray plunders his own past to create the character of Pendennis and the world in which he lives: from miserable schoolboy to striving journalist, from carefree Oxbridge to the high (and low) life of London. The result is a superbly panoramic blend of people, action and background. The true ebb and flow of life is caught and the credibility of Pen, his worldly uncle, the Major, and many of the other characters, extends far beyond the pages of the novel. Held together by Thackeray's flowing, confident prose, with its conversational ease of tone, "Pendennis" is as rich a portrait of England in the 1830s and 40s as it is a thorough and thoroughly entertaining self-portrait.

The History of Pendennis: His Fortunes & Misfortunes, His Friends & His Greatest Enemy (The Penguin English Library)

The Newcomes is Thackeray's most essentially 'Victorian' novel, generous in its proportions, sharp in its criticism of the moral convolutions of the age, and encyclopaedic in its reference. Set in the 1830s and 1840s, a period of rapid change and of political and economic development, the novel considers the fortunes and misfortunes of a 'most respectable' extended middle-class family. The action moves from London to Brighton, from England to France, from the political ambitions of an older generation in the industrial North to the painterly pretensions of a younger generation in Italy. At its centre is Thomas Newcome, a retired Colonel in the Indian Army who finds the snobberies and hypocrisies of early Victorian England disconcerting. In a world of men on the make, of social mobility, and of the buying and selling of women in an aristocratic marriage market, it is the Colonel's distinctive but old-fashioned gentlemanliness that stands out from a self-seeking society. The most observant and witty among Thackeray's studies of his culture, The Newcomes is also among his most complex and allusive novels, and this edition provides particularly detailed notes which clarify his many references.

The Newcomes (Penguin Classics)

Among the vibrant cast of characters who scheme and scramble for life's prizes in this entertaining saga, no one is better equipped than Becky Sharp, Thackeray's supreme creation. Brilliant, alluring, and ruthless, she defies her poverty-stricken background to climb the social ladder, while her sentimental companion Amelia longs only for caddish soldier George. As the two heroines make their way through the tawdry glamour of English society during the Napoleonic wars, military and domestic battles are fought and fortunes are made and lost. Amid the fast-paced comic action stands Dobbin, a true gentleman in a corrupt world, whose unrequited love for Amelia brings pathos and depth to Thackeray's epic satire. This edition includes a new introduction, a chronology of Thackeray's life and works, a select reading list, and an appendix containing parodic material Thackeray cut from the 1853 edition.

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Books by THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Vanity Fair (Collins Classics)

Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair (Vintage Classics)

The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq.

The Rose and the Ring: or The hist Prince Giglio Prince Bulbo Fireside Pantomime for grt Small chldr (Puffin Classics)

Vanity Fair

The History of Henry Esmond, Esq.

The History of Pendennis: His Fortunes & Misfortunes, His Friends & His Greatest Enemy (The Penguin English Library)

The Newcomes (Penguin Classics)

Vanity Fair