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A classic, set during the Napoleonic wars, giving a satiricl picture of a worldly society and revolving around the exploits of two women from very different backgrounds.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• Introduction
• The Composition and Publication of Vanity Fair
• Note on the Text
• Thackeray as Illustrator
• A Chronology of Thackeray's Life and Works
• Before the Curtain(p. 1)
• Chapter I Chiswick Mall(p. 3)
• Chapter II In Which Miss Sharp and Miss Sedley Prepare to Open the Campaign(p. 13)
• Chapter III Rebecca is in Presence of the Enemy(p. 24)
• Chapter IV The Green Silk Purse(p. 32)
• Chapter V Dobbin of Ours*(p. 48)
• Chapter VI Vauxhall(p. 60)
• Chapter VII Crawley of Queen's Crawley(p. 76)
• Chapter VIII Private and Confidential(p. 88)
• Chapter IX Family Portraits(p. 97)
• Chapter X Miss Sharp Begins to Make Friends(p. 105)
• Chapter XI Arcadian Simplicity(p. 113)
• Chapter XII Quite a Sentimental Chapter(p. 131)
• Chapter XIII Sentimental and Otherwise(p. 140)
• Chapter XIV Miss Crawley at Home(p. 158)
• Chapter XV In Which Rebecca's Husband Appears for a Short Time(p. 179)
• Chapter XVI The Letter on the Pincushion(p. 189)
• Chapter XVII How Captain Dobbin Bought a Piano(p. 200)
• Chapter XVIII Who Played on the Piano Captain Dobbin Bought ?(p. 211)
• Chapter XIX Miss Crawley at Nurse(p. 224)
• Chapter XX In Which Captain Dobbin Acts as the Messenger of Hymen(p. 235)
• Chapter XXI A Quarrel About an Heiress(p. 248)
• Chapter XXII A Marriage and Part of a Honeymoon(p. 260)
• Chapter XXIII Captain Dobbin Proceeds on His Canvass(p. 269)
• Chapter XXIV In Which Mr. Osborne Takes Down the Family Bible(p. 276)
• Chapter XXV In Which All the Principal Personages Think Fit to Leave Brighton(p. 292)
• Chapter XXVI Between London and Chatham(p. 315)
• Chapter XXVII In Which Amelia Joins Her Regiment(p. 325)
• Chapter XXVIII In Which Amelia Invades the Low Countries(p. 332)
• Chapter XXIX Brussels(p. 344)
• Chapter XXX 'the Girl I Left Behind Me'(p. 361)
• Chapter XXXI In Which Jos Sedley Takes Care of His Sister(p. 373)
• Chapter XXXII In Which Jos Takes Flight, and the War is Brought to a Close(p. 386)
• Chapter XXXIII In Which Miss Crawley's Relations Are Very Anxious About Her(p. 406)
• Chapter XXXIV James Crawley's Pipe is Put Out(p. 418)
• Chapter XXXV Widow and Mother(p. 438)
• Chapter XXXVI How to Live Well on Nothing a Year(p. 452)
• Chapter XXXVII The Subject Continued(p. 464)
• Chapter XXXVIII A Family in a Very Small Way(p. 482)
• Chapter Xxxix A Cynical Chapter(p. 498)
• Chapter XL In Which Becky is Recognized by the Family(p. 510)
• Chapter XLI In Which Becky Revisits the Halls of Her Ancestors(p. 522)
• Chapter XLII Which Treats of the Osborne Family(p. 535)
• Chapter XLIII In Which the Reader Has to Double the Cape(p. 543)
• Chapter XLIV A Roundabout Chapter Between London and Hampshire(p. 555)
• Chapter XLV Between Hampshire and London(p. 568)
• Chapter XLVI Struggles and Trials(p. 579)
• Chapter XLVII Gaunt House(p. 588)
• Chapter XLVIII In Which the Reader is Introduced to the Very Best of Company(p. 598)
• Chapter Xlix In Which We Enjoy Three Courses and a Dessert(p. 612)
• Chapter L Contains a Vulgar Incident(p. 621)
• Chapter LI In Which a Charade is Acted Which May or May Not Puzzle the Reader(p. 633)
• Chapter LII In Which Lord Steyne Shows Himself in a Most Amiable Light(p. 657)
• Chapter LIII A Rescue and a Catastrophe(p. 668)
• Chapter Liv Sunday After the Battle(p. 678)
• Chapter LV In Which the Same Subject is Pursued(p. 690)
• Chapter LVI Georgy is Made a Gentleman(p. 707)
• Chapter LVII Eothen*(p. 723)
• Chapter LVIII Our Friend the Major(p. 733)
• Chapter LIX The Old Piano(p. 749)
• Chapter LX Returns to the Genteel World(p. 761)
• Chapter LXI In Which Two Lights Are Put Out(p. 768)
• Chapter LXII Am Rhein(p. 783)
• Chapter LXIII In Which We Meet an Old Acquaintance(p. 797)
• Chapter LXIV A Vagabond Chapter(p. 812)
• Chapter LXV Full of Business and Pleasure(p. 830)
• Chapter LXVI Amantium Irae*(p. 839)
• Chapter LXVII Which Contains Births, Marriages, and Deaths(p. 856)
• Explanatory Notes(p. 881)

Extracto provisto por Syndetics

From Nicholas Dames's Introduction to Vanity Fair What kind of a novel is Vanity Fair ? Given the bewildering variety of responses that it has elicited since its publication began in January 1847, we might assume that at no time since Thackeray's serial first gained public notice has the answer to that question been obvious. To the novel's first readers, Thackeray's aim seemed puzzling. G. H. Lewes, one of the Victorian period's most able critics, wondered whether Vanity Fair was too embittered to be truly humorous, and too uniformly skeptical to be effectively satirical; Charlotte Brontë, however, dedicated the second edition of Jane Eyre to Thackeray, whom she had never met, and in the process compared the effect of Vanity Fair to that of a Hebrew prophet admonishing the kings of Judah and Israel. That dilemma--whether Vanity Fair is the work of a moral satirist, or a worldly cynic retailing gossip for the diversion of his audience--has haunted efforts to understand Thackeray ever since. In our own time the pendulum has swung closer to the latter sentiment, thanks in no small part to the efforts of more recent novelists and critics to discredit Thackeray's method; E. M. Forster, in his Aspects of the Novel (1927), compared Thackeray's interruptions of his narrative to that of a bar patron offering to buy you a drink in return for some attention to his not quite lucid stories. There have, however, been intriguing testimonies to the contrary. The Trinidadian historian, social critic, and activist intellectual C. L. R. James attested to reading Vanity Fair regularly starting at the age of eight, learning the workings of the British class system while feeling their persistence in his own West Indian milieu; as James later commented, it was to Thackeray, even more than to Marx, that he owed his vocation. Worldly cynic, righteous prophet, tiresome companion, proto-Marxist social anatomist: the appellations are as contradictory as they are vivid and plausible. What unites these disparate accounts of the novel's effect, however, is their attempt to describe its voice --a narrative style that speaks in a manner utterly unlike the usual Victorian novel. Vanity Fair is Thackeray's masterpiece, his most ambitious and colorful effort, full of characters and scenes memorable in a way his later work could only occasionally recapture; but its most important element, the fact of its presentation that accounts at once for its brilliance and its undeniable difficulty, is the voice of its narrator. Amid a babble of distinctive accents--Becky Sharp's light, cutting wit, Jos Sedley's ponderous inanities, William Dobbin's plain, gentlemanly eloquence--the narrator stands out as the most continually entertaining, and continually protean, of voices. The voice of Vanity Fair 's narrator is its great contribution to the history of the English novel, while being nonetheless the most difficult of the novel's aspects to describe fully or accurately. Without the pyrotechnic virtuosity of Dickens's style, or the measured gravitas of George Eliot, Thackeray's narrator speaks with a mixture of tones that might perhaps be the most distinctively modern among the styles of the Victorian novel. Most evident of all this voice's traits is its undeniable worldliness. As the narrator frequently advertises, he (for this voice is always a male one) has seen the insides of gentlemen's clubs, society dining rooms, auction houses where the effects of bankrupts are sold, foreign courts, respectable and not-so-respectable theaters, boarding schools, tourist hotels, coaching inns, even the chambers of servants. A Londoner, evidently, this narrator can know even the secrets whispered in female drawing rooms; "every person who treads the Pall Mall pavement and frequents the clubs of this metropolis," he blandly announces, "knows, either through his own experience or through some acquaintance with whom he plays at billiards," as much as one need know about the kind of disreputable female who dresses too showily in public and who women refuse to meet. True to his worldly awareness, Thackeray's narrator refuses to spell out the full implications of his description--how might these women earn the money to afford those dresses?--preferring instead to let implication, and a knowing smile, do the work. The innocent and ignorant, "the apprentices in the Park" or "the squire's wife in Somersetshire, who reads of their doings in the Morning Post ," will remain uninstructed in this curious aspect of metropolitan society. As for the narrator and his readers, surely they know enough without being explicitly instructed. "Men living about London," we are told, "are aware of these awful truths." We are in the hands, therefore, of a discreet and rather jaundiced narrative voice, acquainted with--and perhaps already tired of--all the restless machinations of urban strivers. Vanity Fair is a novel full of scandal, including fraud, petty deceit, extramarital complications, and (possibly) murder, but these putative outrages to Victorian notions of social decency are never narrated as surprises. Instead, Thackeray presents them to us with a half-amused, half-disgusted species of boredom, as if to say: Surely you weren't so naïve as to pretend this wasn't the case? Excerpted from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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Library Journal Review

The characters in this complex 19th-century novel (scheming, amoral Becky Sharp; faithful William Dobbins, etc.) were once so well known that they were used as shorthand personality descriptors by other authors. Becky Sharp is willing to do almost anything for position or money, while family funding supports her best friend Amelia's, gentle, unrealistic soul. Becky marries well and then loses money. Amelia marries well and loses both husband and money. As time passes, their fortunes flip, turn, and intertwine until the two friends are old women. Georgina Sutton's wonderfully flexible voice keeps the reader engaged and the characters well differentiated through all 25 CDs of a very complicated story line-quite a feat. -verdict Especially recommended for listeners just starting to explore classic British fiction.-I. Pour-El, Des Moines Area Community Coll., Ames, IA (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

William Makepeace Thackeray was born in Calcutta, India, where his father was in service to the East India Company. After the death of his father in 1816, he was sent to England to attend school. Upon reaching college age, Thackeray attended Trinity College, Cambridge, but he left before completing his degree. Instead, he devoted his time to traveling and journalism.

Generally considered the most effective satirist and humorist of the mid-nineteenth century, Thackeray moved from humorous journalism to successful fiction with a facility that was partially the result of a genial fictional persona and a graceful, relaxed style. At his best, he held up a mirror to Victorian manners and morals, gently satirizing, with a tone of sophisticated acceptance, the inevitable failure of the individual and of society. He took up the popular fictional situation of the young person of talent who must make his way in the world and dramatized it with satiric directness in The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844), with the highest fictional skill and appreciation of complexities inherent within the satiric vision in his masterpiece, Vanity Fair (1847), and with a great subtlety of point of view and background in his one historical novel, Henry Esmond (1852). Vanity Fair, a complex interweaving in a vast historical panorama of a large number of characters, derives its title from John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and attempts to invert for satirical purposes, the traditional Christian image of the City of God. Vanity Fair, the corrupt City of Man, remains Thackeray's most appreciated and widely read novel. It contrasts the lives of two boarding-school friends, Becky Sharp and Amelia Smedley.

Constantly attuned to the demands of incidental journalism and his sense of professionalism in his relationship with his public, Thackeray wrote entertaining sketches and children's stories and published his humorous lectures on eighteenth-century life and literature. His own fiction shows the influence of his dedication to such eighteenth-century models as Henry Fielding, particularly in his satire, which accepts human nature rather than condemns it and takes quite seriously the applicability of the true English gentleman as a model for moral behavior.

Thackeray requested that no authorized biography of him should ever be written, but members of his family did write about him, and these accounts were subsequently published.

(Bowker Author Biography)