Vanity Fair

Written by William Makepeace Thackeray

Narrated by Cyril Taylor-Carr and The Cliff

One of the great Victorian novels by an author at the height of his powers, Vanity Fair follows the fortunes of the calculating, upwardly-mobile Becky Sharp and her gentle, good-hearted friend Amelia Sedley as they leave their boarding school and embark upon their lives in Vanity Fair – the social-climbing, wealth-obsessed world of Regency England in the time of the Napoleonic Wars. William Makepeace Thackeray was a British novelist, author, and illustrator. He is known for his satirical works, particularly his 1848 novel Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of British society, and the 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon, adapted for a 1975 film by Stanley Kubrick.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Author's Republic
• Release date: Oct 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798823422857

William Makepeace Thackeray

William Makepeace Thackeray was born in Calcutta in 1811. He was sent to England in 1817 and was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. Following a period of gambling, unsuccessful investments and a brief career as a lawyer, he turned to writing and drawing. In 1836 he married Isabella Shawe; following the birth of their second daughter, her mental health deteriorated and she had to be permanently supervised by a private nurse. Thackeray's first novel, Catherine, was published in 1839-40. Following the success of Vanity Fair (1847-8) he was able to devote himself to fiction, and his other notable works include Pendennis (1849), The History of Henry Esmond (1852) and The Newcomes (1855). He also edited the commercially successful Cornhill Magazine, which published writers such as Tennyson, George Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Thackeray died suddenly on Christmas Eve, 1863.