Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design In William Thackeray's Vanity Fair, no one is better equipped in the struggle for wealth and worldly success than the alluring and ruthless Becky Sharp, who defies her impoverished background to clamber up the class ladder. Her sentimental companion Amelia, however, longs only for caddish soldier George. As the two heroines make their way through the tawdry glamour of Regency society, battles - military and domestic - are fought, fortunes made and lost. The one steadfast and honourable figure in this corrupt world is Dobbin with his devotion to Amelia, bringing pathos and depth to Thackeray's gloriously satirical epic of love and social adventure.

Becky Sharp, an intelligent young lady with no family or money, becomes a governess. But this type of life is not enough for her. She has big plans for herself. Is she clever enough to find success? Will she marry and be happy? Or will life be unkind to her?

Written in 1848, Vanity Fair is an excellent satire of English society in the early 19th Century. Thackeray states several times that it is a novel "without a hero", and at a couple of points tries to claim that Amelia, a good person but who inevitably comes across as rather wishy-washy, is the heroine. Thackeray apparently saw people as "abominably selfish and foolish", and this negative view comes across loud and clear with his use of vicious vocabulary, and his unremittingly dark portrayal of human nature. The author's voice is continually present, and his wry observations do contribute to making the novel vastly entertaining. They were also intended to make it instructive to his readers.

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray. 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 lives: through the retiring Amelia Sedley and the brilliant Becky Sharp, Thackeray examines the position of women in an intensely exploitative male world.

A richly comic dissection of English society during the Napoleonic Wars. Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley together leave the shelter of Miss Pinkerton's Academy for Young Ladies. They now inhabit the infinitely more fascinating and dangerous Vanity Fair where the only standard is worldly sucess. Becky, charming and amoral, is well-fitted for the fight; when an ill-judged bowl of punch ruins her plans for marriage, her quick wits soon find a range of alternatives. But sweet and sentimental Amelia only longs for her worthless soldier lover. Издание полностью на английском языке. Полный, неадаптированный текст произведения.

Серия книг "Зарубежная классика - читай в оригинале" - это бессмертные произведения великих мастеров пера, написанные ими на их родном языке и наречии. Книги из этой серии помогут читателю углубленно изучать иностранные языки, обогатят его внутренний мир и по-новому откроют произведения известных классиков. Учись английскому у Уильяма Теккерея! Неадаптированное издание на английском языке.

Vanity Fair was first published in 1848, with the subtitle A Novel without a Hero, reflecting Thackeray's interest in deconstructing his era's conventions regarding literary heroism. The story follows the lives of Becky Sharp and Emmy Sedley amid their friends and families during and after the Napoleonic Wars.

Tells the story of Becky Sharp's rise from rags to riches in Vanity Fair. This is a work about the situation of two women during nineteenth century British society and the French napoleonic wars.

"Ярмарка тщеславия" не только изобилует неожиданными сюжетными поворотами, но и блестяще отражает дух времени. Ироничное, порой саркастичное произведение, изобличающее сборище подлых самовлюблённых людей, остаётся интересным и актуальным и по сей день. Неудивительно, что именно эта история поиска счастья двух подруг считается вершиной творчества знаменитого английского классика! Читайте зарубежную литературу в оригинале!

Brilliant anti-heroine Becky Sharp will do anything to climb to society's loftiest heights and couldn't be more different from her rich, sweet-natured schoolmate, Amelia Sedley. Their parallel lives are marked by love, lust, marriage, fortune and loss, in all their different guises, as they navigate the corrupt circus of upper-class Regency England. Hailed as a literary masterpiece upon first publication, William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair has never waned in popularity and remains a highly entertaining satire of early nineteenth-century high society. This gorgeous edition includes an afterword by the prizewinning author and critic, Henry Hitchings. Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.

Vanity Fair is among the richest and most entertaining of novels, a sparkling and witty story of English society during the Napoleonic Wars. A piercing satire of the Victorian middle classes, it was hugely popular from the moment of its first publication in 1847. The narrative follows two contrasting young women, the flighty and enterprising Becky Sharp and her more upright counterpart Amelia Sedley. Their adventures take them from Miss Pinkerton's Academy in Chiswick to the glamour of high society in both London and Paris. Along the way, Thackeray treats the reader to 'a great quantity of eating and drinking, making love and jilting' together with 'cheating, fighting, dancing and fiddling'. The result is one of the true classics of nineteenth-century literature.

"Oh, those women! They nurse and cuddle their presentiments, and make darlings of their ugliest thoughts…" Self-serving social climber and anti-heroine Becky Sharp will do anything to raise her status and attain wealth and standing with smart Society. Clever, lively and resourceful, orphan Becky is the total opposite of her naive and sentimental schoolmate Amelia Sedley, a pampered, yet good-natured girl from a wealthy family. As both women build lives for themselves in London, Thackeray decadently satirises the corruption and flaws of 19th-Century English Society.

'I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year.' Becky Sharp is sharp, calculating, and determined to succeed. Craving wealth and a position in society, she charms, hoodwinks, manipulates everyone she meets, rising in the world as she attaches herself to a succession of rich men. Becky's fortunes are contrasted with those of her best friend Amelia, who has none of Becky's wit and vitality but whose gentle-heartedness attracts the devotion of the loyal Dobbin. Set during the Napoleonic wars, Vanity Fair follows Becky as she cuts a swathe through Regency society. Thackeray paints a panoramic portrait of the age, with war, money and national identity his great subjects. The battle for social success is as fierce as the battle of Waterloo, and its casualties as stricken. The satire is at once biting and profound, sparing none in a clear-eyed exposure of a world on the make. Thackeray's scepticism of human motives borders on cynicism yet Vanity Fair is among the funniest novels of the Victorian age. This new edition includes all Thackeray's original illustrations.

Two young women, Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley, leave Miss Pinkerton s Academy together. They are friends, yet the witty and flirtatious Becky looks set to outdo the passive, sweet-natured Amelia with her ruthless determination to grab what she can in life. And so all kinds of battles and fortunes are won and lost against a backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. Thackeray's satire on corruption at every level of English society is rightly subtitled a novel without a hero', since none of its characters have improved themselves by the end. However, it was a success from its first appearance in 1847 and remains one of the greatest comic novels.

William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair depicts the anarchic anti-heroine Beky Sharpe cutting a swathe through the eligible young men of Europe, set against a lucid backdrop of war and international chaos. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction and notes by John Carey. No one is better equipped in the struggle for wealth and worldly success than the alluring and ruthless Becky Sharp, who defies her impoverished background to clamber up the class ladder. Her sentimental companion Amelia Sedley, however, longs only for the caddish soldier George. As the two heroines make their way through the tawdry glamour of Regency society, battles - military and domestic - are fought, fortunes made and lost. The one steadfast and honourable figure in this corrupt world is William Dobbin, devoted to Amelia, bringing pathos and depth to Thackeray's gloriously satirical epic of love and social adventure. Set against the background of the Napoleonic wars, Thackeray's 'novel without a hero' is a lively satirical journey through English society, exposing greed, snobbery and pretension. This edition follows the text of Thackeray's revised edition of 1853. John Carey's introduction identifies Vanity Fair as a landmark in the development of European Realism, and as a reflection of Thackeray's passionate love for another man's wife.

'I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year' Becky Sharp is a poor orphan when she first makes friends with the lovely Amelia Sedley at Miss Pinkerton's Academy for Young Ladies. She may not have the natural advantages of her companion but she more than makes up for it with her wit, charm, deviousness and determination to make a success of herself in the world, whatever the cost. Vanity Fair is the story of anti-hero Becky's spectacular rise and fall as she gambles, manipulates and seduces her way through high society against the backdrop of Waterloo and the Napoleonic wars.