Vanity Fair

A brilliant satire on the nineteenth-century English society, William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair was listed on the BBC's the Big Read poll of UK's best-loved books. a timeless classic. Vanity Fair is an English novel which follows the lives of Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley amid their friends and families during and after the Napoleonic Wars. 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.

William Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelist and illustrator. He is most known for his satirical works, including the 1847-1848 novel "Vanity Fair" a panoramic depiction of British society, and the 1844 novel "The Luck of Barry Lyndon" which was adapted for a 1975 film by Stanley Kubrick. Thackeray was born in Calcutta, British India, and moved to England after his father died in 1815. He went to several schools and briefly attended Trinity College, Cambridge, before leaving to see Europe. Thackeray spent a large portion of his inheritance on gambling and unsuccessful newspapers. He resorted to journalism to help support his family, primarily for Fraser's Magazine, The Times, and Punch. Thackeray began as a satirist and parodist, achieving prominence with pieces that reflected his penchant for roguish characters. He is well known for Vanity Fair, which starred Becky Sharp, and The Luck of Barry Lyndon. Thackeray's early works were characterized by scathing attacks on high society, military prowess, marriage, and hypocrisy, which were frequently written under several pseudonyms.