&&LDIV&&R&&LDIV&&R&&LI&&RVanity Fair&&L/I&&R, by &&LB&&RWilliam Makepeace Thackeray&&L/B&&R, is part of the &&LI&&RBarnes & Noble Classics&&L/I&&R &&LI&&R &&L/I&&Rseries, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of &&LI&&RBarnes & Noble Classics&&L/I&&R: &&LDIV&&R New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars - Biographies of the authors - Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events - Footnotes and endnotes - Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work - Comments by other famous authors - Study questions to challenge the readers viewpoints and expectations - Bibliographies for further reading - Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. &&LI&&RBarnes & Noble Classics &&L/I&&Rpulls together a constellation of influences―biographical, historical, and literary―to enrich each readers understanding of these enduring works.&&L/DIV&&R&&L/DIV&&R&&L/DIV&&R&&LDIV&&R &&L/DIV&&R&&LDIV&&R“I think I could be a good woman, if I had five thousand a year,” observes beautiful and clever Becky Sharp, one of the wickedest―and most appealing―women in all of literature. Becky is just one of the many fascinating figures that populate &&LB&&RWilliam Makepeace Thackeray&&L/B&&R’s novel &&LI&&RVanity Fair&&L/I&&R, a wonderfully satirical panorama of upper-middle-class life and manners in London at the beginning of the nineteenth century. &&LP&&RScorned for her lack of money and breeding, Becky must use all her wit, charm and considerable sex appeal to escape her drab destiny as a governess. From London’s ballrooms to the battlefields of Waterloo, the bewitching Becky works her wiles on a gallery of memorable characters, including her lecherous employer, Sir Pitt, his rich sister, Miss Crawley, and Pitt’s dashing son, Rawdon, the first of Becky’s misguided sexual entanglements. &&L/P&&R&&LP&&RFilled with hilarious dialogue and superb characterizations, &&LI&&RVanity Fair&&L/I&&R is a richly entertaining comedy that asks the reader, “Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?” &&L/P&&R&&LDIV&&R&&LB&&RFeatures more than 100 illustrations drawn by Thackeray himself for the initial publication.&&L/B&&R &&L/DIV&&R&&LDIV&&R &&L/DIV&&R&&LDIV&&R&&LP style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"&&R&&LSTRONG&&RNicholas Dames&&L/B&&R&&L/B&&R is Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, and is the author of &&LI&&RAmnesiac Selves: Nostalgia, Forgetting, and British Fiction, 1810–1870&&L/I&&R, and other commentary on nineteenth-century British and French fiction.&&L/P&&R&&L/DIV&&R&&L/DIV&&R Nicholas Dames is Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, and is the author of Amnesiac Selves: Nostalgia, Forgetting, and British Fiction, 1810–1870 , and other commentary on nineteenth-century British and French fiction. From Nicholas Damess Introduction to Vanity Fair What kind of a novel is Vanity Fair ? Given the bewildering variety of responses that it has elicited since its publication began in January 1847, we might assume that at no time since Thackerays serial first gained public notice has the answer to that question been obvious. To the novels first readers, Thackerays aim seemed puzzling. G. H. Lewes, one of the Victorian periods most able critics, wondered whether Vanity Fair was too embittered to be truly humorous, and too uniformly skeptical to be effectively satirical; Charlotte Brontë, however, dedicated the second edition of Jane Eyre to Thackeray, whom she had never met, and in the process compared the effect of Vanity Fair to that of a Hebrew prophet admonishing the kings of Judah and Israel. That dilemma—whether Vanity Fair is the work of a moral satirist, or a worldly cynic retailing gossip for the diversion of his audience—has haunted efforts to understand Thackeray ever since. In our own time the pendulum has swung closer to the latter sentiment, thanks in no small part to the efforts of more recent novelists and critics to discredit Thackerays method; E. M. Forster, in his Aspects of the Novel (1927), compared Thackerays interruptions of his narrative to that of a bar patron offering to buy you a drink in return for some attention to his not quite lucid stories. There have, however, been intriguing testimonies to the contrary. The Trinidadian historian, social critic, and activist intellectual C. L. R. James attested to reading Vanity Fair regularly starting at the age of eight, learning the workings of the British class system while feeling their persistence in hi