The Book of Snobs

This is a delightful find. A collection of essays from Punch in which Thackeray pokes fun at much of his world. The final chapter/instalment explicitly sets out the author's view - that it is an affront that people gain automatic status based on their birth - either to a title or to a fortune. Thomas Piketty would applaud!
Aside from the philosophy, there is a lot of fun in these pages. Some of the fun is that intended by Thackeray, and some other fun comes about as the book provides for the modern reader a perspective on a lost world of Victorian England.
Read June 2015.

I've stuck this on my read shelf but (quiet whisper) I haven't actually finished it. The writing is witty, but too repetitive. As an article, it would be great, but as a book it just ends up rehashing the same old ideas and jokes.

I am still working my way through this book. Thackeray wrote it as periodicals for a paper and so there isn't a narrative directly to follow which felt a bit arduous reading it "chapter" by chapter, I have been enjoying it although, Thackeray is deft with his wit and severe with his criticism of "snobs" although as he goes along he begins including himself as a "snob" which initially he denied outright earlier on in the novel. I will write a more comprehensive review when I complete it.