payment page
Study Tools
Overview
Vanity Fair is William Makepeace Thackeray's satirical panorama of upper-middle-class life and manners in London at the beginning of the nineteenth century
. It was a serial publication that first appeared in 1847 in Punch magazine. Over the next nineteen months, the story of Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley unfolded and enthralled readers in London. It was printed as a bound volume, or book, in 1848, and early editions included Thackeray’s own illustrations. Vanity Fair is one of the earliest domestic novels, remains a classic today, and Becky Sharp, the ultimate social climber, inspires as much debate now as then.
