Vanity Fair is a novel by the English author William Makepeace Thackeray, which follows the lives of Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley amid their friends and families during and after the Napoleonic Wars. It was first published as a 19-volume monthly serial from 1847 to 1848, carrying the subtitle Pen and Pencil Sketches of English Society, which reflects both its satirisation of early 19th-century British society and the many illustrations drawn by Thackeray to accompany the text. It was published as a single volume in 1848 with the subtitle A Novel without a Hero, reflecting Thackeray's interest in deconstructing his era's conventions regarding literary heroism. It is sometimes considered the "principal founder" of the Victorian domestic novel.
Title page to the first issue of the Vanity Fair 1847–1848 serial, whose canary-yellow colour became a Thackeray hallmark. Thackeray was also responsible for its illustrations.
A reprint of John Bunyan's Plan of the Road from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City, including Vanity Fair as the major city along the path
Mr. Joseph Entangled by Becky
George Osborne
William Makepeace Thackeray
William Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelist and illustrator. He is known for his satirical works, particularly his 1847–1848 novel Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of British society, and the 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon, which was adapted for a 1975 film by Stanley Kubrick.
1855 daguerreotype of William Makepeace Thackeray by Jesse Harrison Whitehurst
Image: William Makepeace Thackeray's signature
Self Caricature by Thackeray
Thackeray portrayed by Eyre Crowe, 1845
