Vanity Fair

More about the book

Vanity Fair is an English novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, which follows the lives of Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley amid their friends and families during and after the Napoleonic Wars. Rebecca Sharp, daughter of an art teacher and a French dancer, is a strong-willed, cunning, moneyless, young woman determined to make her way in society. After leaving school, Becky stays with Amelia Sedley, who is a good-natured, simple-minded, young girl, of a wealthy London family. In London, Becky meets the dashing and self-obsessed Captain George Osborne (Amelia's betrothed) and Amelia's brother Joseph Sedley, a clumsy and vainglorious but rich civil servant home from the East India Company. The story sets off with Becky's hopes of marrying Sedley, the richest young man she has met.