Thackeray’s upper-class Regency world is a noisy and jostling commercial fairground, predominantly driven by acquisitive greed and soulless materialism, in which the narrator himself plays a brilliantly versatile role as a serio-comic observer.

Although subtitled ’A Novel without a Hero’, Vanity Fair follows the fortunes of two contrasting but inter-linked IJves: through the retiring Amelia Sedley and the brilliant Becky Sharp, Thackeray examines the posJtJon of women in an intensely expIoitative male world. When Vanity Fair was published in 1884, Charlotte Bronte commented: ’The more I read Tllackeray’s works the more certain I am that lie stands alone - alone in his sagacity, alone in his truth,alone ill his feeling... Thackeray is a Titan.’

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) was a relatively little known author when, in January 1847, his Vanity Fair began to appear in the popular Punch magazine in twenty monthly parts. If the serial made no immediate impact, it was probably because its early episodes and subtide, ’Pen and Pencil Sketches of English Society’, suggested a work of loosely connected sketches in the typical Punch satiric manner,to whose conventions Thackeray further conformed by supplying his own illustrations or ’candles’. Significantly, the author’s letters during the first stages of composition show that the ’Sketches’ were evolving in ways that he had not anticipated. His gathering serial audience was being similarly surprised - into admiring enthusiasm. After reading an early number, Thomas Carlyle’s wife Jane wrote to her husband that Thackeray’s work was ’very good indeed, beats Dickens out of the world’ (quoted in Simpson, p. 22).* Soon after, the serial’s first ten numbers were favourably greeted by the Edinburgh Review. It was,however, left to Charlotte Bronte, an avid reader of Thackeray’s serial, to champion its author as a new star in the firmament. Her preface to the second edition of Tane Eyre, prepared in December 1847 (when the Vanity Fair serial was roughly at mid-point), greeted Thackeray’s achievement and prompted her to explain: ’I have alluded to him, Reader, because I think I see in him an intellect profounder and more unique than his contemporaries have yet recognised;because I regard him as the first social regenerator of the day... [and]because to him ... I have dedicated this second edition of "Jane Eyre" ’ (Smith (ed.), p. 4). Thackeray’s serial having been a considerable succes d’estime, the novel was published in volume form in 1848 with a new and provocative subtitle, ’A Novel without a Hero’.

Chis’wick Mall

In which Miss Sharp and Miss Sedley prepare to open the campaign

Rebecca is in presence of the enemy

The green silk purse

Dobbin of ours

Vauxhall

Crawley of Queen’s Crawley

Private and confidential

Family Portraits

Miss Sharp begins to make friends

Arcadian simplicity

Quite a sentimental chapter

Sentimental and otherwise

Miss Crawley at home

In which Rebecca’s husband appears for a short time

The letter on the pincushion

How Captain Dobbin bought a piano

Who played on the piano Captain Dobbin bought

Miss Crawley at nurse

In which Captain Dobbin acts as the messenger of Hymen

A quarrel about an heiress

A marriage and part of a honeymoon

Captain Dobbin proceeds on his canvass

In which Mr Osborne takes down the family bible

In which all the principal personages think fit to leave Brighton

Between London and Chatham

In which Amelia joins her regiment

In which Amelia invades the Low Countries

Brussels

’The girl I left behind me’

In which Tos Sedley takes care of his sister

In which Tos takes flight, and the waris brought to a close

In which Miss Crawley’s relations are very anxious about her

James Crawley’s pipe is put out

Widow and mother

How to lwe well on nothing a year

The subject continued

A family in a small way

A cynical chapter

In which Becky is recognisedby the family

In which Becky revisits the ballsof ber ancestors

Which treats of the Osborne family

In which the reader has to double the Cape

A roundabout between London and Hampshire

Between Hampshire and London

Struggles and trials

Gaunt House

In which the reader is introduced to the very best of company

In which we enjoy three coursesand a dessert

Contains a vulgar incident

In which a charade is acted which may or may not puzzle the reader

In which Lord Steyne shows himself in a most amiable light

A rescue and a catastrophe

Sunday after the battle

In which the same subject is pursued

Georgy is made a gentleman

Eothen

Our friend the Major

The old piano

Returns to the genteel world

In which two lights are put out

Am Rhein

In which we meet an old acquaintance

A vagabond chapter

Full of business and pleasure

Amantium Irae

Which contains births, marriages, and deaths

NOTES TO THE TEXT