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Vanity Fair (Wordsworth Classics) (Paperback)

by William Makepeace Thackeray (Author)
4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
Price: £1.99 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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Product details

  • Paperback: 720 pages
  • Publisher: Wordsworth Editions Ltd (1 May 1992)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1853260193
  • ISBN-13: 978-1853260193
  • Product Dimensions: 19.3 x 12.7 x 4.1 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 10,756 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #1 in  Books > Fiction > The Classics > Thackeray, William Makepeace
    #90 in  Books > Fiction > By Period > 19th Century > Authors

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Product Description

Product Description

This book comes with an introduction and notes by Owen Knowles, University of Hull. Thackeray's upper-class Regency world is a noisy and jostling commercial fairground, predominantly driven by acquisitive greed and soulless materialism, in which the narrator himself plays a brilliantly versatile role as a serio-comic observer. Although subtitled 'A Novel without a Hero', "Vanity Fair" follows the fortunes of two contrasting but inter-linked lives. Through the retiring Amelia Sedley and the brilliant Becky Sharp, Thackeray examines the position of women in an intensely exploitative male world.
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Customer Reviews

11 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.6 out of 5 stars (11 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Pure class, 18 Oct 2006
This review is from: Vanity Fair: A Novel Without A Hero (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)
It really is that good. How much you like this book will depend to a large extent on how much you like the Victorian novel. If you like Dickens, the Brontes, Elliot and the like, then you are in for a real treat, because Thackeray is the best of the lot. Less verbose and rambling than Dickens, less sentimental than Elliot, more ironic than the Brontes, Thackeray is a supreme writer of English - ironic, cheerful and pessimistic by turns, sometimes tender and affectionate then cruel and caustic, he maintains a narrative control that invites the reader to share his moral vision of the hypocrisies and absurdities of Victorian England, and the world we all inhabit.

Vanity Fair has that universal quality of the best fiction - it enables you to see the world in a new way. An hour reading this novel is time spent with a true comedian, someone who sees the grotesque, humorous, admirable, cruel, stubborn, heroic, gentle etc reality of the human condition and can tell it in chapters of the best English since Shakespeare.
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26 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A fluent and affectionate satire of Victorian society, 24 Sep 2000
By ariza@another.com (Chepstow, Wales) - See all my reviews
'Vanity Fair' is a novel which seems to have the power to discourage its reading not simply by the cover, but rather the spine of the book. It can be seen dominating many a bookshelf, such is its size. Do not, however be put off by these 800 pages because it is actually easier to read than many novels only half the size and this is all down to the excellent prose stylings of Thackeray himself. There is not a moment when the writing moves from its accustomed fluidity to the turgid pedantry which characterises some Victorian novelists. On top of this the plot itself is more unified than many other serializations contemporary with its writing. As soon as Becky Sharp rides precociously through the gates of Miss Pinkerton's Academy to begin her career as but a lowly governess the reader recognises the beginnings of a long journey which will examine peaks and troughs of British and continental society. The astuteness and opportunism of Becky herself is matched only by the acuteness of Thackeray in mocking this society, his characters' class-based prejudice and their manifold follies. Set against the violence of Waterloo, Becky's campaign of social climbing is implicitly compared with Napoleon's imperialist adventures. Must such a cynical, calculating rise be followed by an ignominious fall? There is one way to find out, and I urge you to do so.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A novel written before its time., 26 April 2006
By J. L. Land (North East, England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Although a mammoth read, Thackeray has voiced what other Victorian writers felt obliged to conceal. Vanity Fair retains its relevance in today's capitalist consumer society. I believe there is a Becky Sharp lurking within all of us! Best read I have read in the past year.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Regency satire
Every Amazon revue I've read states that VF is Victorian. It's REGENCY folks (i.e. late Georgian)!
Published 7 days ago by LEP

5.0 out of 5 stars I read it with a smile on my face
You may have read all the other reviews and still be wondering if you should tackle this 800 page Victorian novel. After all, it will involve a lot of reading hours. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Slow Lorris

4.0 out of 5 stars Long haul
I've finally finished this book after more than five months of reading (I started it back in December), a period in which I have started and finished many other books. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Greshon

5.0 out of 5 stars Recommended
I really enjoyed this. It's essentially the story of Becky and Amelia, two girls of English high society of the Regency and reign of George IV, and what happens to them both after... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Nicholas Whyte

4.0 out of 5 stars A Novel Without a Hero
I must admit that I owned Vanity Fair for quite a while before I actually got around to reading it...I kept making attempts but drifted off after a few chapters. Read more
Published 12 months ago by Forever Procrastinating

5.0 out of 5 stars A marvellous reading
This is a marvellous reading of a great book. Jane Lapotaire's ironic and sometimes slightly world-weary delivery does full justice to the comedy of the novel, and listening to... Read more
Published on 7 April 2006

4.0 out of 5 stars Worthy classic but a huge book
Worthy classic, enjoyed reading it, but it is a huge book and for modern readers sometimes quite slow moving. Read more
Published on 7 Jul 2005 by Terra

4.0 out of 5 stars Not bad for a classic!
Let's face it, these days there aren't that many students who really enjoy ploughing their way through a chunky eight-hundred-and-something page victorian novel, yet we're all... Read more
Published on 17 Jun 2003

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