William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863)

A very readable tale that had me up late in the night to arrive at the very satisfactory ending. The novel is tightly structured, with some fabulous 'set pieces' and sparking dialogue. Thackeray himself is very present; he introduces himself at the very beginning of the book as 'the Manager of the Performance' and certainly doesn't leave the reader in any doubt as to his thoughts on his characters. They are by no means simply as good or bad as they first seem and his star creation, Becky show more Sharpe, is quite clearly intelligent, vital, entertaining and is cheerful in any and every circumstance in which she finds herself. Some of the worst slurs on her character actually don't ring true and she clearly comes to despise High Society just as she achieves her greatest triumphs in it. He finds her as fascinating as does almost every other character in the novel and though he never refers to it directly (no doubt due to the sensibilities of the time) we imagine she gets nearly as low as a lady possibly can. His asides on Becky's seemingly angelic friend Amelia, also show he loses patience with her martyrdom on many occasions.
We can see Vanity Fair as an allegory or moral fable that reveals certain universal truths about the human condition. Many of the minor characters actually have names that denote their personal circumstances or moral attributes. For instance, Tom Eaves, a gossip, is a combination of 'peeping Tom' and 'eavesdropper'. The Crawleys are prepared to do just that to gain admittance to the rank of society above the small gentry where they find themselves. Meanwhile, some of the names of the families over in the European phase of the novel are just plain hilarious in their pomposity.
But it is Becky Sharpe that is the star of the show. She is one of the great female characters in English literature. She may be wicked but it is difficult not to forgive her, to see that sparkle in her eyes and be dazzled by her vitality. 'She runs away with the author's intention (and) steals the show'. (Gilbert Phelps, from the introduction of my very ancient Pan edition of Vanity Fair) show less

The Kickleburys on the Rhine (1850):

Thackeray's 1850 Christmas Book is a jolly little account of a summer holiday trip the author makes with a lawyer friend to the German spa-town of Rougetnoirburg (not too hard to identify as Baden Baden). Like the other Christmas Books, it's only about fifty pages long, plus a dozen or so full-page drawings by the author.

As a bonus, it comes with a preface in which the author reproduces in full a mocking review of the book that has appeared in the Times show more and then proceeds to tear the pompous reviewer into very small pieces. Something that authors are always advised against doing, but in this case he doesn't seem to have much to fear. It's a satirical book anyway, he's already warned readers that the Times advises them not to buy it and he's sold out the first edition within a week...

It isn't really a book about Germany, it's a send-up of the English abroad, a good topic for satire then as now. Mr Titmarsh's fellow passengers on the boat to Antwerp include an appalling noisy, snobby, selfish and self-important Englishwoman, Lady Kicklebury (widow of a baronet) who tyrannises her servants, her two daughters and her son-in-law, whilst slobbering all over anyone they meet who appears to be either rich or aristocratic (and thrusting her unmarried daughter at any of them who appear to be rich and single). Needless to say, the unmarried daughter, Fanny, whom Titmarsh is also half in love with, has quietly arranged for the man who's courting her to travel to Germany on the same boat. And Lady Kicklebury has a splendid humiliation lined up for her in Rougetnoirburg.

In passing, we get a few little glimpses of German scenery (most of which no-one is looking at, as already indicated by the man in the frontispiece), and a few comic notes on the economy of Rougetnoirburg, which depends entirely on the casino proprietor Lenoir, whilst the palace of the hereditary prince crumbles slowly away.

A pleasant little diversion, which still does exactly the job it was designed for 170 years ago. show less

I found this book to be truly wonderful, perhaps my new favorite. Thackeray makes his characters come alive, and the story is just so well told with its twists and turns. It's also interesting to have a central character--especially a leading woman in a 19th Century novel--who is so rotten. Becky is a sociopath but, as a friend also reading the book pointed out, she is the product of a sociopathic culture.

Amelia and Dobbin I cared about deeply, although, again, Amelia isn't an Elizabeth show more Bennet who the reader can get behind wholeheartedly--she's too weak-willed for that.

These fascinating, flawed, characters will stay with me for a long time. Despite Thackeray's 900 pages, I still long to know more!

I will add, however, that there was at least one passage where I just wanted to get past the description and back to the characters I was so fascinated by. I suspect, however, that Thackeray's long description of Germany in the last 10% of the book is meant to build the reader's anticipation for the denouement of the book. show less

In discussing the origins of The Bonfire of the Vanities, his brilliant satire of the social and economic mores of New York City in the 1980s, Tom Wolfe was always quick to cite Thackeray’s Vanity Fair as his inspiration. Wolfe seemed particularly taken with that earlier work’s subtitle--A Novel Without a Hero--which he took to be a perfect characterization for the story that he himself wanted to tell. He even went so far as to arrange to have his work published in serial form in a show more magazine (Rolling Stone in Wolfe’s case), just as Thackeray did with his magnum opus a century and a half before. There can hardly be higher praise than that for one author to give to another.

Vanity Fair itself owes a considerable debt to a classic work that preceded it by 150 years, John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. In that religious allegory, a person on the path to Heaven first had to pass through the town of Vanity in which there was a fair that appealed to all the basest traits of humanity: greed, infidelity, deceit, avarice, envy, duplicity, and so on. Thackeray saw this as an apt metaphor for his story of the state of English society at the time of the Napoleonic Wars and the dawn of the Victorian Age. In fact, the frame that begins and ends Vanity Fair has two young girls putting on a puppet show during which all of the action in the book takes place. Toward the end of the novel, the author even reveals himself to be the narrator of the tale, and a most unreliable one at that.

If that level of historical detail is not absolutely necessary to summarize Vanity Fair, it is perhaps useful context for a prospective reader to understand what taking on this tome will entail. Because, make no mistake, this book requires a significant investment of time and attention to get through it to the end. It is indeed a meandering and occasionally sprawling tale, written in the style of a time far removed from what the modern audience is used to. But it is also remarkably observant about the human condition as well as wickedly funny; those two things alone make reading it today well worthwhile. Further, in the character of Becky Sharp, Thackeray has created an anti-heroine for the ages—with her resilient and scheming nature, she could hold her own now just as well as she did back then.

How the specific events in the story transpire is not the most important thing about the novel, serving as they do as the backdrop for the societal skewering that was the author’s true purpose. In short, Becky comes from an impoverished background in a culture where that is a serious impediment to advancement. Her school friend Amelia Sedley is from a well-to-do family, but she herself is a rather simple and unambitious girl. Both of these friends enter into disappointing marriages, Becky to a rich but rough-hewn fellow whose family disapproves of her while Amelia devotes herself to a philandering cad and ignores the less-dashing colleague who truly loves her. When Amelia’s family falls on hard economic times, it sets off chain of events that takes several hundred pages to unfold. In those pages, though, there is some real literary gold as Thackeray uses his razor-honed wit and gentle word play to expose a multitude of vanities and foibles as he saw them. I certainly can recommend this book, but only for those who understand what they are getting into first! show less