"But as we are to see a great deal of Amelia, there is no harm in saying, at the outset of our acquaintance, that she was a dear little creature. And a great mercy it is, both in life and in novels, which (and the latter especially) abound in villains of the most sombre sort that we are to have for a companion so guileless and good natured a person. As she is not a heroine, there is no need to describe her person; indeed I am afraid that her nose was rather too short than otherwise and her cheek More...

Spoilers!



Miss Rebecca Sharp's Guide to the Regency Society


1. If a young lady is not born into either rank or fortune, she will be looked down upon by good society and forced to exist in a humiliating dependency on others for life, unless the said young lady is willing, nay, not merely willing, but most strenuously strive to improve her situation.

2. If the said young lady, despite being a poor orphan, happens to have the good fortune of being admitted into an exclusive academy for young ladies a More...

January 2013 update at 70%:

"Too many more chapters like the one about the Gaunts, and I'll have to give this up again. *mind numbing*"

December 2012 Review

At 60%, I surrender! There are some good things about this book -- a story that is never dull, lots of fascinating insight into the bad side of human nature. But, how did Thackeray manage to write a book with no sympathetic characters? Everyone is simply awful, either in their simple-minded goodness, or their self-serving wickedness. I can't br More...

Thackeray's opus is a wonder. Long, yes, but so very good in so many ways.

He's part Oscar Wilde, part Jonathan Swift, with a dash of Dickens, but all his own voice.

Since the story is so long and sprawling, I only jotted down a few notes on my impressions.

* He breaks the 4th wall, some times with savage glee, yanking it down making you look at yourself and the characters in a new light. Other times he does it with delicacy, sliding back the wall and making you feel like it's just him and you in t More...

Vanity Fair is sometimes called the best British novel ever written, but it's totally not. Middlemarch is way better. Honestly, VF's not even in the top ten. So why do people love it so much? Because of Becky Sharp. Which is funny, because she's not what it was supposed to be about.

Becky Sharp is to Thackeray as Satan is to Milton. The argument has been made in both cases that the author secretly intended us to love their most memorable characters, but that's not true - or at least it's not that More...

I realize that I'm not making friends here by only giving what is considered a masterful piece of literature what amounts to a "meh" review but that's really how I felt about this book.

On a small scale, I thought the writing was too long-winded. This is not a fancy story and it could have been told more concisely. I was mostly bored reading it.

On a bigger scale, I had serious issues with the heroine. Rebecca is the type of woman who has always made my stomach churn in anger and to ask me to sym More...

This is unprecendented: I'm giving this four stars before I've finished.

Aside from the much lauded razor sharp wit, cutting social observations and poetically despicable characters, gems like this elevate this book above others for its sheer all encompassing timelessness:

He lived comfortably on credit. He had a large capital of debts, which laid out judiciously, will carry a man along for many years, and on which certain men about town contrive to live a hundred times better than even men with r More...

Here I am, 54 years old, and for the very first time reading William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair. "Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero." I disagree with Thackeray. The 'Hero' of Vanity Fair is the steadfast and stalwart William Dobbin; of that there is no doubt. This novel is not the coming of age, or bildungsroman, of Becky Sharp. No, Miss Rebecca Sharp sprang from the womb enlivened with her desire to claw her way to the top. She can't help it, and nor should she; is she really any diffe More...

THIS BOOK IS ABOUT A GIRL WHO WAS ALIVE AT THE WRONG TIME.

First things first: Don't get this edition! I recently attended my college reunion. Whilst ambling idly around the green lawns of that hallowed institution, I had chance to encounter my most distinguished and beloved professor of English. Exalted that I happened to be dandling Thackeray's baby on my knee (instead of the glossy monthly version of Vanity Fair, as is more common with me), with sparkling eyes and an enchanting smile I thrust my copy before his erudite and discerning nose. "My favori More...

This book quickly became on of my all-time favorites. I was surprised that I was never assigned the book in college, but a few years ago I realized that it was one of those titles that any self-respecting Anglophile should have on their shelf. The story starts out rather slowly, but you suddenly realize that you're 150 pages in and are completely engrossed! I enjoy how different the novel is from everything else you would expect to read from the time period (with the exception of Tristram Shandy More...

This is one of the few books I read for high school English classes that I didn't love. I detested it, actually. My lack of enjoyment reading this book is probably, in part, because I had to read it for an advanced English Shakespeare class. The teacher decided to add this book to our reading list, otherwise consisting of many of William Shakespeare's brilliant plays, which I loved. I couldn't feel any empathy with Becky Sharp and didn't like a thing about her. I'd like to think that if I read t More...

There are more than 800 pages in this book. I attempted it many times, each time losing track somewhere in the middle. I finally read it out of pure spite -- no way was I going to let some snotty 800-page classic get the better of me! It was okay, and I certainly have the literary acumen to understand why it is a remarkable piece of literature. Regardless, I think Thackery could have done the story justice in half the pages.

But really, I did enjoy parts of it. If you are out for great, thick cl More...

An interestingly satirical (interesting because a similarity to Candide by Voltaire came to mind while reading it, and while not as brazen and provocative as Voltaire, it does have a healthy dose of self-mocking/loathing of the status quo, in this case early 19th century English upper crust) though long-winded (at times leisurely, at other times tedious, owing to antiquated syntax and vocabulary) and with an interesting narrative voice, which pokes in and out of the story, much like the emcee in More...

This is a masterpiece and I wish I had been able to write on it when I first read it. I also enjoyed the BBC mini-series which was truer to the novel than the Mira Nair adaptation with Reese Witherspoon in 2004 (although the MN version was obviously visually more stunning). Reese took the role of Becky Sharpe in a different direction and I think we were meant to be more sympathetic to her plight. I liked Becky better in the book where she was fabulously selfish & nasty.

It took quite a while until the fire was kindled. During the first half of the book I felt that this novel is part of the luggage that we could through overboard without feeling sorry about it. The characters of this book are not up to modern psychological knowledge, I thought. Well, all of this stays kind of true. However, with the time being I got myself accustomed to the shortcomings - and that opened my eyes to the joys of it. There's some kind of deliberate randomness in a lot of the procee More...

This book is really good and there are a lot of funny bits that I am sure would be hilarious if one was well read in pop culture of 1847 London. But, there are footnotes to help one along. I love/hate that is really is "a book without a hero" as Thackeray declares. every single character has some sort of defect that Thackeray does not attempt to hide from us. In a way I feel like he is a graphic father, showing me the world - warning me of all the egotistic and selfish people it contains, and wh More...

Two girls and two very different personalities and temperaments, Amelia Sedley and Becky Sharp, form the center of this lengthy story "without a hero". By the end I was almost convinced that all is 'vanity' in this world, or at least in this novel. This reminded me somewhat of Balzac (e. g. Cousin Bette), but with more humor.
The best thing in the book was the Authorial presence as he comments on the people and their actions at regular intervals. The two most memorable aspects of the book for me More...

Trying to add a little culture to my reading list, I've been working on this novel for the better part of a month.

A 19th-century society story, the novel follows the lives of Rebecca Sharp and Amelia Sedley, two girls who become friends at school. Amelia is a pretty, mild-mannered wealthy young lady, and Rebecca/Becky is a smart, scheming scholarship girl only too willing to use her friendship with Amelia to make her way in society, which is described in (at times excruciating) detail.

The stor More...

Seriously one of my most favorite books. Thackeray portrays his characters as people really are - flawed. That doesn't mean that they don't have their virtues, however.
The characters portray types of people that still exist in the world today. Amelia is dependent on another for her own happiness. George is vain and selfish, and is insensitive to the feelings of others. Miss Crawley is prejiduce, but won't admit it. Jos Sedley is selfish, and a slave to his appetites. Georgy is spoiled. Mr. Osbo More...

This book has a love hate relationship with me. I cheered when Amelia finally brings her head above water. I wanted to shake some sense in her throughout the book. I wished that Rebecca had ended up in a debtors prison. The indomitable spirit of both these women was interesting to see unfold from their perspective situations. What a cutthroat world Vanity Fair is. Most of the men had little senses/brains, but one Major Dobbins who I loved from the beginning. I do have to confess that I glanced o More...

excellent satire of early 19th century upper middle class and upper class British society.... good plot; well rounded (despite their being foils or essences/types) characters; attention to detail and complex structure - but very long.... perhaps it's being serialized rather than written in book form impacted length...

Oooh, Becky Sharp, you scheming minx. I started this in junior high but got disgusted with the heroines (one too evil, the other too namby-pamby). Now I'm loving it...

It couldn't have been this exact edition I read, this having been published in 2003 and myself having read it around 1984 or 1985. My brother was the literature student, but he couldn't take this weighty tome. I borrowed it off him during the course of a family holiday and barely spoke to the family again until I'd finished it.

It is considered to be perhaps the definitive account of late Georgian life, although I reckon it depicts the Victorians more, after all it was written by an eminent Victo More...

Amazing novel, I am sorry it took me so long to get around to reading it. I expected a Regency novel of manners and society, and instead I am getting a toungue in cheek mimicry of the same. To my reading friends, if you have avoided this because of some high school English trauma, try it again now.

This novel was even better the second time round. The pages fly by with Thackeray's vivid depiction of a London which seems to have changed so little in 200 years - still populated by the same motley crew of characters from all walks of life, trying to get on in the city. Becky Sharp is one of the most fascinating, attractive, ingenious, well-drawn and three-dimensional characters in all of literature, and reading this novel ten years after the first time I read it just made me fall in love with More...

This lengthy novel at times tries the reader's patience, but the firey Becky Sharp commands attention to the end.[return][return]School chums Amanda Sedley and Becky Sharp come from two different backgrounds: the former from privelege, the latter from poverty thanks to a starving artist father. Amanda is meek while Becky is cunning, and the novel depicts how these two different personalities make their way through life. Amanda falls in love with Osbourne, a handsome scoundrel whose father ruined More...

I had a lovely Everyman's edition of Vanity Fair for several years, just sitting on my bookshelf unread, looking reproachfully at me. Finally, I decided to take it down and read it, thus filling an enormous gap in my Victorian-era reading. I fear that I can now only be disappointed in Thackeray's other books (though I intend to read them anyway), because I can't imagine anything better than Vanity Fair.

The plot does sprawl a little, but the characters are so wonderfully realized that it doesn't More...