Vanity Fair

The only English novel which…challenges comparison with War and Peace – John CareyThe best thing he ever wrote - sharp, brilliant, touching, clever and cruel, with an unforgettable heroine – Joanna TrollopeWitty, sexy, sandy-haired Becky Sharp, whose impoverished background explains her hunger for rich men and high position. She is a rebel from the very first chapter of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. Her one final act of kindness derives from her constant virtue: seeing things as they are – Maggie Gee * Independent *A terrific book - bold, funny, scathing and quite unpredictable – Al MurrayBecky Sharp may be one of literature’s great schemers, but she’s also one of its most memorable and entertaining. More rounded than almost all the simpering Victorian dolls who followed, she alone is worth the read * The Times *Becky Sharp is one of the best bad women in literature …she is deliciously bad in an era when women were not meant to be – Donna LeonStill one of the bitchiest, cattiest, funniest and most entertaining novels ever written – Katy Guest * The Independent *

William Makepeace Thackeray was born on 18 July 1811 in Calcutta in India. After studying at Trinity College Cambridge he worked as a journalist and studied Art in London and Paris. In 1836 he married Isabella Shawe and they went on to have three daughters, one of whom died in infancy. He first found literary success with The Yellowplush Papers in 1837 and went on to write other works such as The FitzBoodle Papers, Catherine, The Luck of Barry Lyndon and The Snobs of England before he published his masterpiece, Vanity Fair, in 1847. William Makepeace Thackeray died on Christmas Eve in 1863.