With an Introduction and Notes by Owen Knowles, University of Hull 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.
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 LXVII Which Contains Births, Marriages, and Deaths
CHAPTER LXVI Amantium Irae
CHAPTER LXV Full of Business and Pleasure
CHAPTER LXIV A Vagabond CHAPTER
CHAPTER LXIII In Which We Meet an Old Acquaintance
CHAPTER LXII Am Rhein
CHAPTER LXI In Which Two Lights are Put Out
CHAPTER LX Returns to the Genteel World
CHAPTER LIX The Old Piano
CHAPTER LVIII Our Friend the Major
CHAPTER LVII Eothen
CHAPTER LVI Georgy is Made a Gentleman
CHAPTER LV In Which the Same Subject is Pursued
CHAPTER LIV Sunday After the Battle
CHAPTER LIII A Rescue and a Catastrophe
CHAPTER LII In Which Lord Steyne Shows Himself in a Most Amiable Light
CHAPTER LI In Which a Charade Is Acted Which May or May Not Puzzle the Reader
CHAPTER L Contains a Vulgar Incident
CHAPTER XLIX In Which We Enjoy Three Courses and a Dessert
CHAPTER XLVIII In Which the Reader Is Introduced to the Very Best of Company
