Table of Contents
FROM THE PAGES OF VANITY FAIR
Title Page
Copyright Page
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
THE WORLD OF WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY AND VANITY FAIR
Introduction
Dedication
BEFORE THE CURTAIN
CHAPTER I - Chiswick Mall
CHAPTER II - In Which Miss Sharp and Miss Sedley Prepare to Open the Campaign
CHAPTER III - Rebecca Is in Presence of the Enemy
CHAPTER IV - The Green Silk Purse
CHAPTER V - Dobbin of Ours
CHAPTER VI - Vauxhall
CHAPTER VII - Crawley of Queen‘s Crawley
CHAPTER VIII - Private and Confidential
CHAPTER IX - Family Portraits
CHAPTER X - Miss Sharp Begins to Make Friends
CHAPTER XI - Arcadian Simplicity
CHAPTER XII - Quite a Sentimental Chapter
CHAPTER XIII - Sentimental and Otherwise
CHAPTER XIV - Miss Crawley at Home
CHAPTER XV - In Which Rebecca‘s Husband Appears for a Short Time
CHAPTER XVI - The Letter on the Pincushion
CHAPTER XVII - How Captain Dobbin Bought a Piano
CHAPTER XVIII - Who Played on the Piano Captain Dobbin Bought?
CHAPTER XIX - Miss Crawley at Nurse
CHAPTER XX - In Which Captain Dobbin Acts as the Messenger of Hymen
CHAPTER XXI - A Quarrel About an Heiress
CHAPTER XXII - A Marriage and Part of a Honeymoon
CHAPTER XXIII - Captain Dobbin Proceeds on His Canvass
CHAPTER XXIV - In Which Mr. Osborne Takes Down the Family Bible
CHAPTER XXV - In Which All the Principal Personages Think Fit to Leave Brighton
CHAPTER XXVI - Between London and Chatham
CHAPTER XXVII - In Which Amelia Joins Her Regiment
CHAPTER XXVIII - In Which Amelia Invades the Low Countries
CHAPTER XXIX - Brussels
CHAPTER XXX - ‘The Girl I Left Behind Me‘
CHAPTER XXXI - In Which Jos Sedley Takes Care of His Sister
CHAPTER XXXII - In Which Jos Takes Flight, and the War Is Brought to a Close
CHAPTER XXXIV - James Crawley‘s Pipe Is Put Out
CHAPTER XXXV - Widow and Mother
CHAPTER XXXVI - How to Live Well on Nothing a Year
CHAPTER XXXVII - The Subject Continued
CHAPTER XXXVIII - A Family in a Very Small Way
CHAPTER XXXIX - A Cynical Chapter
CHAPTER XL - In Which Becky Is Recognized By the Family
CHAPTER XLI - In Which Becky Revisits the Halls of Her Ancestors
CHAPTER XLII - Which Treats of the Osborne Family
CHAPTER XLIII - In Which the Reader Has to Double the Cape
CHAPTER XLIV - A Roundabout Chapter Between London and Hampshire
CHAPTER XLV - Between Hampshire and London
CHAPTER XLVI - Struggles and Trials
CHAPTER XLVII - Gaunt House
CHAPTER XLVIII - In Which the Reader Is Introduced to the Very Best of Company
CHAPTER XLIX - In Which We Enjoy Three Courses and a Dessert
CHAPTER L - Contains a Vulgar Incident
CHAPTER LI - In Which a Charade Is Acted Which May or May Not Puzzle the Reader
CHAPTER LII - In Which Lord Steyne Shows Himself in a Most Amiable Light
CHAPTER LIII - A Rescue and a Catastrophe
CHAPTER LIV - Sunday After the Battle
CHAPTER LV - In Which the Same Subject Is Pursued
CHAPTER LVI - Georgy Is Made a Gentleman
CHAPTER LVII - Eothen
CHAPTER LVIII - Our Friend the Major
CHAPTER LIX - The Old Piano
CHAPTER LX - Returns to the Genteel World
CHAPTER LXI - In Which Two Lights Are Put Out
CHAPTER LXII - Am Rhein
CHAPTER LXIII - In Which We Meet an Old Acquaintance
CHAPTER LXIV - A Vagabond Chapter
CHAPTER LXV - Full of Business and Pleasure
CHAPTER LXVI - Amantium Irae
CHAPTER LXVII - Which Contains Births, Marriages, and Deaths
ENDNOTES
AN INSPIRATION FOR VANITY FAIR
COMMENTS & QUESTIONS
FOR FURTHER READING
FROM THE PAGES OF VANITY FAIR
The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. (page 12)
A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry WHOM SHE LIKES. (page 27)
There was no little fellow but had his jeer and joke at Dobbin; and he bore everything quite patiently, and was entirely dumb and miserable. (page 38)
I know that the tune I am piping is a very mild one (although there are some terrific chapters coming presently), and must beg the good-natured reader to remember, that we are only discoursing at present about a stockbroker’s family in Russell Square, who are taking walks, or luncheon, or dinner, or talking, and making love as people do in common life, and without a single passionate and wonderful incident to mark the progress of their loves. The argument stands thus—Osborne, in love with Amelia, has asked an old friend to dinner and to Vauxhall—Jos Sedley is in love with Rebecca. Will he marry her? That is the great subject now at hand. (page 48)
Sir Pitt Crawley was a philosopher with a taste for what is called low life. (page 79)
‘Matilda must leave me half her money.’ (page 93)
‘Oh, sir—I—I’m married already.’ (page 144)
Everybody in Vanity Fair must have remarked how well those live who are comfortably and thoroughly in debt: how they deny themselves nothing; how jolly and easy they are in their minds. (page 212)
‘There’s no quarrelling, bickering, slandthering, nor small talk amongst us. We all love each other.‘ (page 258)
No more firing was heard at Brussels—the pursuit rolled miles away. Darkness came down on the field and city: and Amelia was praying for George, who was lying on his face, dead, with a bullet through his heart. (page 317)
In the first place, and as a matter of the greatest necessity, we are bound to describe how a house may be got for nothing a year. (page 361) ‘A person can’t help their birth.’ (page 408)
‘My dear sir, you ought to know that every elder brother looks upon the cadets of the house as his natural enemies, who deprive him of so much ready money which ought to be his by right.’ (page 459)
I know few things more affecting than that timorous debasement and self-humiliation of a woman. (pages 488—489)
Which of the dead are most tenderly and passionately deplored? Those who love the survivors the least, I believe. (page 596)
Ah! vanitas Vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied? (page 680)
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Vanity Fair was serialized in monthly parts between January 1847 and July
1848, and published in volume form in 1848.
Published in 2003 by Barnes & Noble Classics with new Introduction, Notes,Biography,
Chronology, Inspired By, Comments & Questions, and For Further Reading.
Introduction, Notes, and For Further Reading
Copyright @ 2003 by Nicolas Dames.
Note on William Makepeace Thackeray, The World of William Makepeace Thackeray
a
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Vanity Fair
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WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
William Makepeace Thackeray was born on July 18, 1811, in Calcutta, India. His father, an officer for the East India Company, died when William was a young boy, and he was sent to England to live with his aunt and attend school. Never much of a student, William left Trinity College, Cambridge, after two years and traveled to Germany. When he returned to England, he began to study law at London’s Middle Temple, but in 1832, when he received an inheritance from his father, he dropped out to pursue the life of a writer and artist; beginning in 1834, he lived in Paris for three years.
Back in London, he began to contribute regularly to various periodicals, including the Times, Fraser‘s, the Morning Chronicle, the New Monthly Magazine, and Punch. At first he published anonymously or under a pseudonym; Michael Angelo Titmarsh, George Savage FitzBoodle, Jeames de la Pluche, and Ikey Solomons were among the pen names he used. The Paris Sketch Book (1840) was his first book-length publication and The Irish Sketch Book (1843) the first volume to be published under his own name.
The successful serial publication of Vanity Fair (1847-1848) in Punch placed Thackeray at the forefront of the British literary scene. The response to the first chapters was lukewarm, but this satire of upper-middle-class life in early-nineteenth-century England quickly became a critical and popular success. The book’s heroine, Becky Sharp, remains one of the most memorable heroines in British fiction.
Like Vanity Fair, most of Thackeray’s work first appeared in “numbers,” or installments, including The Snobs of England, by One of Themselves (1846—1847), the semi-autobiographical Pendennis (1848-1850), its sequel The Newcomes (1853-1855), and The Virginians (1857-1859). One exception, The History of Henry Esmond (1852), a historical novel, was initially published in three volumes. Thackeray’s work and that of his contemporary Charles Dickens have often been compared.
William Makepeace Thackeray portrayed the society and personages of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England with sardonic wit and eloquence. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage on Christmas Eve 1863, leaving unfinished the historical romance Denis Duval.
THE WORLD OF WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY AND VANITY FAIR
1811 William Makepeace Thackeray is born on July 18 in Calcutta, India, into a wealthy merchant family. Soon after his birth, his fa ther is appointed to a lucrative position as a collector for the East India Company.
1816 Following his father’s sudden death, William is sent to live with his aunt in Chiswick, England.
1817 William enrolls in Chiswick Mall, a private boarding school that he detests.
1820 His mother, having remarried, returns to England.
1822 He transfers to the Charterhouse School, a private boarding school in Smithfield, where he endures canings and other disci pline. He prefers the popular fictions of the day to the classical lit erature the school teaches. Excused from physical activity because of his nearsightedness, he spends time drawing.
1828 Thackeray enters Trinity College, Cambridge, where he is happier as a student but still largely uninterested in the curriculum.
1830 He leaves Cambridge without a degree and travels to Weimar, Germany, the intellectual capital of Europe, where he becomes ac quainted with German Romantic literature and meets its guiding spirit, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. His observations of court life in Germany will provide material for his description of the princi pality of Pumpernickel in Vanity Fair; that book also reflects a skepticism about religious doctrine that grew during this trip.
1831 Thackeray returns to England and enters London’s Middle Tem ple to study law. He meets William Maginn, an editor, who gives him his first work as a journalist.
1832 Now twenty-one, Thackeray receives an inheritance from his fa ther of about 20,000 pounds.
1833 Thackeray abandons his studies, invests part of his fortune in the newspaper The National Standard, and travels to Paris as its corre spondent; the paper fails after two years, an experience that will provide material for his novel The Newcomes. Thackeray loses his fortune through gambling and speculation; most of the loss results from the failure of an Indian bank in which he had invested.
1834 Thackeray settles in Paris to study art.
1836 While working in Paris as a correspondent for his stepfather’s newspaper The Constitutional, Thackeray marries seventeen-year old Isabella Shawe.
1837 Thackeray gives up the bohemian life of an artist and returns to England with his new wife. His first daughter is born. The Consti tutional goes bankrupt, leaving him without a steady job. He be gins to contribute literary sketches and illustrations to Fraser’s Magazine; his satire The Yellowplush Correspondence, in which a footman, Charles Jeames Yellowplush, offers social and political observations, appears in Fraser’s beginning this year. For the next ten years, he writes for various London periodicals, including the Times, Fraser‘s, the Morning Chronicle, the New Monthly Magazine, and Punch. At first he publishes anonymously or under a comic assumed name; among his pseudonyms are Michael Angelo Titmarsh, George Savage FitzBoodle, Jeames de la Pluche, and Ikey Solomons.
1838 His second daughter is born but dies eight months later.
1840 Shortly after the birth of a third daughter, Thackeray’s wife suffers a mental breakdown. Thackeray sends his daughters to Paris to live with his parents, while he remains in London to raise money for his family’s expenses. For the next several years, he travels be tween London and Paris; he visits French asylums where he hopes Isabella’s mental condition might be cured. He publishes his first full-length volume, The Paris Sketch Book, a collection of essays and observations.
1841 He publishes The Great Hoggarty Diamond, a mock-heroic tale about a gem that causes bad luck, narrated by Michael Angelo Tit marsh.
1843 The Irish Sketch Book is Thackeray’s first work published under his own name.
1844 Thackeray publishes The Luck of Barry Lyndon, which in 1856 will be published in a revised version as The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon. He travels to the Far East.
1846 Upon his return from the Far East, he publishes Notes of a Jour ney from Cornhill to Grand Cairo. Placing his wife in the care of a family in Essex, Thackeray purchases a home in London for him self and his daughters. He becomes emotionally attached to Mrs. Jane Brookfield, the wife of a friend. His popular sketches of Lon don characters, The Snobs of England, by One of Themselves, ap pear in Punch and will continue in 1847.
1847 Publication of Vanity Fair in monthly installments begins in Punch.
1848 The serialization of Vanity Fair is completed, and the novel is pub lished in book form; subtitled A Novel without a Hero, the satire quickly becomes a best-seller and elevates Thackeray to the rank of major novelist. The Book of Snobs appears in book form. Pen dennis, a partly autobiographical novel, begins to appear in install ments.
1850 Pendennis appears in book form. Thackeray’s friendly rival Charles Dickens publishes David Copperfield.
1851 Thackeray and Dickens are compared
in the May issue of the North British Review. Thackeray ends his relationship with Mrs. Brookfield.
1852 He publishes The History of Henry Esmond and begins a success ful tour of the United States delivering the lecture series English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century (published 1853).
1853 The Newcomes, the sequel to Pendennis, begins serial publication.
1855 The Newcomes is published in book form. Thackeray begins a sec ond successful lecture series in the United States titled The Four Georges (published 1860); its subject is the Hanoverian kings of the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. He publishes The Rose and the Ring, a Christmas book.
1857 The Virginians, a sequel to Henry Esmond set partly in America, begins to be published in installments. Thackeray runs for a seat in parliament but is not elected.
1860 He becomes the first editor of Cornhill Magazine, in which Lovel the Widower and The Adventures of Philip on His Way through the World, the last of the Arthur Pendennis trilogy, will be serialized.
1863 The Roundabout Papers, a collection of essays that appeared in Cornhill Magazine, is published. William Makepeace Thackeray dies of a cerebral hemorrhage on Christmas Eve at his new estate in Palace Gardens, leaving a historical romance, Denis Duval, un finished. He is buried at Kensal Green Cemetery on December 30; an estimated 2,000 mourners, including Dickens, attend the fu neral. A commemorative bust stands at Westminster Abbey.