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    Vanity Fair
    Vanity Fair
    Vanity Fair
    Audiobook (abridged)6 hours

    Vanity Fair

    Written by William Makepeace Thackeray

    Narrated by Jane Lapotaire

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Vanity Fair, with its rich cast of characters, takes place on the snakes-and-ladders board of life. Amelia Sedley, daughter of a wealthy merchant, has a loving mother to supervise her courtship. Becky Sharp, an orphan, has to use her wit, charm, and resourcefulness to escape from her destiny as a governess. This she does ruthlessly, musing’I think I could become a good woman, if I had £5000 a year.’ Thackeray’s story is set at the time of the battle of Waterloo, in which the Sedley fortunes are lost – and Amelia is back to square one – while Becky rises with contemptuous ease.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNaxos Audiobooks
    Release dateJun 1, 1997
    ISBN9789629545680
    Author

    William Makepeace Thackeray

    William Makepeace Thackeray was born in Calcutta in 1811. He was sent to England in 1817 and was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. Following a period of gambling, unsuccessful investments and a brief career as a lawyer, he turned to writing and drawing. In 1836 he married Isabella Shawe; following the birth of their second daughter, her mental health deteriorated and she had to be permanently supervised by a private nurse. Thackeray's first novel, Catherine, was published in 1839-40. Following the success of Vanity Fair (1847-8) he was able to devote himself to fiction, and his other notable works include Pendennis (1849), The History of Henry Esmond (1852) and The Newcomes (1855). He also edited the commercially successful Cornhill Magazine, which published writers such as Tennyson, George Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Thackeray died suddenly on Christmas Eve, 1863.

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    Reviews for Vanity Fair

    4/5

    105 ratings84 reviews

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    • 3/5
      This long and complicated story did not live up to the movie for one main reason- the movie strove to make the main character, Becky Sharp, likeable. It really brings a book down when you're supposed to hate the main character. In fact, I'm not entirely certain how I got through 800+ pages feeling conflicted (I wanted to like and root for the main character, but the author thought she was awful). I think we should all feel bad for Becky- she's incredibly talented and intelligent, but, because she's born without money, she's can't shine without resorting to baser methods. It is readable (obviously), though not particularly enjoyable.
    • 4/5
      Ok, I'm not going to lie, by and large I have little idea what this was about (it was kinda like shoving four seasons of a television sitcom into one weekend...). That being said, I found it hilarious. The author's writing voice was phenomenal, and the character depth and building was wonderful.
    • 4/5
      The setting is during the Regency, which always seemed to me to be a reference to the greatest and most loved author of domestic fiction-- Jane Austen. And as a novel not wholly swallowed up by the actions of governments and rebels and so on, it probably bears some interest for her fans. However, Thackeray's character is probably more of a contrast, than anything else, with Miss Jane's. She once humorously wrote that she should probably include something about Napoleon or Julius Caesar "or anything to distract from the story". Thackeray, on the other hand, does dilute (you might almost say contaminate) the story with the great and grand things of the world, from the affairs of the army and the affairs of foreigners, to simple pedantry and scattered French phrases. It's also a very long book, probably because it takes him so time to brought about to the point. It's also a bit bitter, and sometimes has the character of the drawing-room revolutionary who always has some reason to take offense, although I cannot help but find this amusing, since Jane's sunny disposition was hardly the result of sunny circumstances.... and the main boast that he has against her would be that he is more *biting* in all things-- assuming, of course, that that is a positive trait. And, of course, if it isn't, there isn't much good that can be made of his comment about one of the young ladies: "As she is not a heroine, there is no need to describe her person...." As opposed to Jane, who I think rather liked better those who were not. {And if I may be allowed to speak comparatively at more length, I find it interesting that even Lizzy Bennet is a great deal more polite than she is sometimes imagined to be; certainly she is a gentle dove in the company of a lady like Rebecca Sharp.} But if there is some good to be said about it, it must be that it is mostly about a social setting, however dreary and unhappy the observer is about it. If at times he comes off as a man who intently looks at all the people around him, the better to say unkind things about them, I suppose it might also be allowed that his keen observation has some insight. And if his comments are unkind, then perhaps at least some of them will be of interest to anyone who has ever wanted to say to a young lady, "I...... 'm not your stepping-stone." (8/10)
    • 4/5
      The subtitle for Vanity Fair is 'A Novel Without a Hero'. Intrigued by this, as I read this book, I kept on searching for the 'hero' of this story. Although there are many characters, all of the morally 'good' characters are so self-sacrificing and spineless that they are hard to like. The dashing and colorful characters are, of course, deceitful and selfish, but very likeable. By the end of the book, I wasn't sure who I wanted to have that perfect ending. Overall, the descriptions and plot are strong, altough Thackeray makes a point of interjecting his sarcastic commentary about life in Victorian England. I found this funny at first, but it got a little tiresome. Definitely a strong Victorian novel, but I still prefer Dickens or Hardy.

      I both listened and read this book (Wanda McCaddon as narrator). McCaddon does an excellent job of accents, but I find her voice just a bit grating and would have loved the smooth British accents of Simon Vance or John Lee.
    • 4/5
      I started out liking this one very much and loving Becky's no-nonsense spirit, but by halfway through I thought the story was dragging quite a bit and by the end I was long past caring about these silly characters and their goings-on. File under Classic Lit What Needed a Keen Editor.
    • 4/5
      This one took me a long time to read. It's a good book--I'd say about 60% of it is a great book--but it wanders and lags a bit too much for me. The characters are either interesting but inconsistent (like Becky Sharp) or consistent but uninteresting (like Dobbin). None of the characters are ultimately very likable, but that isn't a weakness, in my opinion. More of an issue is that the book is really two novels that intertwine a little bit at some key moments. One novel is the satiric look at the rise and fall of Becky Sharp and the other is the "romance" of Amelia and Dobbin. The former is by far the stronger part, and the scenes of Becky's triumphs in London are written without any allusion to Amelia and Dobbin. The romance isn't of much interest, and given the other narrative, the very idea of romance is treated with ambivalence. The problem, though, is that one plot or the other will take over for a hundred or more pages, and by the time Thackeray returns to the other plot, I had forgotten many of the important but undifferentiated characters. I'm glad I read it, but I would not say it is a "must read" novel from the 19th century.
    • 5/5
      Beautifully narrated!
      The musical interludes bring us closer to the history and its time.
    • 5/5
      I found this book to be truly wonderful, perhaps my new favorite. Thackeray makes his characters come alive, and the story is just so well told with its twists and turns. It's also interesting to have a central character--especially a leading woman in a 19th Century novel--who is so rotten. Becky is a sociopath but, as a friend also reading the book pointed out, she is the product of a sociopathic culture. Amelia and Dobbin I cared about deeply, although, again, Amelia isn't an Elizabeth Bennet who the reader can get behind wholeheartedly--she's too weak-willed for that. These fascinating, flawed, characters will stay with me for a long time. Despite Thackeray's 900 pages, I still long to know more!I will add, however, that there was at least one passage where I just wanted to get past the description and back to the characters I was so fascinated by. I suspect, however, that Thackeray's long description of Germany in the last 10% of the book is meant to build the reader's anticipation for the denouement of the book.
    • 3/5
      Quite witty, with barbed humor.
    • 1/5
      I read this in high school for a senior English class for one of our quarterly book reports.

      Absolutely hated the main character.
    • 4/5
      As characteristic for novels written in that period of time, or at least ABOUT that era (19th century England), Vanity Fair is an extremely wordy book. It pushes the boundaries of rambling, in my opinion, but still, the story is always a good one. What I love about it is, the theme is one that is timeless, true for every generation probably since the history of man, and most likely in every country. If every country in the world made it mandatory for their schools to direct a play based on this novel, edited according the cultural norms of their society (e.g. in the Arab world Rebecca - Becky - Sharp would be Reem Shalabya, perhaps, in Argentina she might be Renata Salvas, etc), it would make total sense, and I'm pretty sure everyone would be able to relate to it. It's social climbing at it's ugliest, hidden behind the beautiful setting of England in the 1800s. The main character, Becky Sharp, is extremely unlikeable because of her selfishness and utter cruelty to people around her, beloved or not. I take some issue with the rather misogynistic view that if a woman knows what she wants then the author has to portray her as cruel and conniving, whereas the kind and good-hearted Amanda Sedley is always vulnerable and weak, as if that's the way woman should always be. But, if Becky Sharp was a charitable and warm-hearted person, I doubt this classic would be as interesting as it is to so many people.
    • 5/5
      This novel, set in part around the famed Battle of Waterloo in which Napoleon gets his ultimate defeat at the hands of the British, goes through 66 chapters of set up for a tumultuous (and brilliant) final chapter in which every supposition in the prior chapters is set on its head. As a whole, this book is witty, wonderful, and enchanting. It is fit to be a classic - indeed, one of the best books I've ever read.

      It is set around the main character, born Becky Sharp. She is a social climber who built her life up from poverty. However, as the subtitle of this book intones, she is an ignoble protagonist. She stirs her hand in every section of the book as a manipulator and as a fraud, yet somehow much good is wrought by her improprieties in the lives of many of her compatriots.

      This book provides an interesting look into the lives of England in the 1800s. English classism and the pettiness of nobles are on full display. Nonetheless, there are noble, though still flawed and human, characters such as Amelia. The story traverses from character to character as a masterful plot is wrought.

      I especially enjoyed Thackeray's wit - on full display in various comments on the narrative. He writes like a journalist, but not one striving for poor objectivity as is seen in the American practice. He entertains as he tells - and is shown to be a master of the quill.
    • 3/5
      The story opens with two graduating students leaving Miss Pickerton's academy for young ladies. One graduate, Amelia Sedley, is well loved and receives an enormous send off while her companion, Rebecca Sharp, barely garners a glance. Becky is an orphaned governess, traveling with Amelia as her guest. Once at the Sedley home Rebecca sets out to become betrothed to Amelia's brother, Joseph. Jos serves as Collector of Boggley Wollah in the East India Company's Civil Service. Once that attempt fails Rebecca becomes even more amoral and shameless. In today's terms she would be classified as a psychopath because of her lack of conscience and her inability to feel anything for her fellow man. Amelia is disgustingly sweet and Rebecca is shamelessly indifferent. Neither one makes a satisfying hero in Thackeray's eyes. I found the story to be plotless and pointless. What made the reading more difficult was Thackeray getting confused and mixing up the characters.
    • 5/5
      A biting and witty satire on English social life and customs during the first part of the nineteenth century, its subtitle is “a novel without a hero,” and it could also be added without heroines. Yet the book’s two central characters, the virtuous but dim and naive Amelia Sedley and the amoral, clever, congenial Becky Sharp both display admirable and distressing qualities as they rise, fall, and rise again in society. One of the great virtues of Vanity Fair is that while it is told in hilarious prose, with short burst of genuine pathos, it was praised by its contemporaries as a thoroughly realistic account of the society that it portrays.
    • 4/5
      Long and sprawling, witty and satirical, this is quite a character study. I think I recognized someone I know in real life in each and every one of the main characters. A novel without a hero, you say, Mr. Thackeray? Then please explain Dobbin! :)
    • 4/5
      A satire about "highborn" English life in the 19th century. I found Thackeray's writing witty, funny, and biting. Then, as now, it is meant to be read in serialized form, hence I read it via Serial Reader. I couldn't really take too much Thackeray in a day! That being said, I did enjoy the inhabitants of Vanity Fair, although I did not care a whit for any of them. 822 pages
    • 3/5
      This is a good book but it is very long and I actually gave up for awhile on reading it. But it is a classic so I made it through the rest of the book. It does get dry at times but the plot is amazing and it's worth the read, as long as you can get through the 912 pages.It's definitely a classic and should be read.
    • 5/5
      "A Novel without a Hero" is promised and delivered. But it is also a work of great insights, and has never been out of print. the feckless military hero George, the spoiled darling, the ever-suffering Amelia Sedley, and the ambitious and vindictive Becky Sharpe will endure for a very long time in its native language. One is reminded of the perhap apocryphal story of the writer who produced a screenplay of this lengthy novel only to have his producer come to him to ask "Why is Becky considered the villain of this movie?" is too much fun to pass up. Read it, and enjoy it, especially if you have heretofore considered life as a contest of "Good" and "Evil". This book has been blowing the whistle on us all since 1847.
    • 5/5
      The sad thing about earning a BA in English Literature is that most of the books you have to read and think about won't actually be enjoyable. This is an exception. It's funny.
    • 3/5
      Dated material yet quite rich in style. I was surprised how the author uses names to satirize people, the lawyer Mr. Bullocks, for example.
    • 3/5
      Thackeray has a meandering style I find quite entertaining. His characters are convincingly developed and the story is well constructed. It's worth reading. However, I prefer the film version starring Reese Witherspoon and directed by Mira Nair. It captures the essence of the story very concisely, and the slightly altered ending is a great improvement in my opinion.Libby
    • 3/5
      I'm really not sure where William Makepeace Thackeray's "Vanity Fair" went wrong for me. Classic British literature with a downtrodden orphan and snarky narrator? This should have been right up my alley.However, overall, I found the book to be okay. I enjoyed the story of the troubled and scheming Becky Sharp and her counterpoint, the simpering but kind Amelia. But it felt like the book was padded with tons and tons of extraneous material that didn't advance the story or add any interest.Disappointing because I thought I was going to love this novel.
    • 4/5
      Vanity Fair is sometimes called the best British novel ever written, but it's totally not. Middlemarch is way better. Honestly, VF's not even in the top ten. So why do people love it so much? Because of Becky Sharp. Which is funny, because she's not what it was supposed to be about.

      Becky Sharp is to Thackeray as Satan is to Milton. The argument has been made in both cases that the author secretly intended us to love their most memorable characters, but that's not true - or at least it's not that easy. While both dominate their stories, both authors are clearly uncomfortable with the fact that that's happened.

      Vanity Fair didn't really take shape until Thackeray turned it into an autobiography: the Amelia / Dobbins story, which he thought of after he'd submitted the first few chapters and which caused an eight-month delay while he reconfigured the story, mirrors his own one-sided love affair with his friend's wife. Dobbins is based on himself. And certainly their story turns out to be an important counterweight to Becky's; without it, the novel would be a slighter work about a femme fatale, arguably more fun but less important. With them it turns into a sprawling landmark in realist literature, one that unarguably influenced War & Peace.

      But Amelia and Dobbins are such milquetoasts that Becky insists on running away with the book. They're nice people, and you root for them, but during their chapters...you wish it would get back to Amelia's frenemy.

      And Thackeray attacks Becky, again and again, viciously. His most telling attack is in her constantly reiterated failure to love her son, which is a mortal sin in Victorian novels as it is in the rest of them. A father can occasionally be forgiven for not loving his children; never a mother. But there's also this deadly passage toward the end of the novel, in which he defensively compares her to the old-school, evil mermaid:"Has [the author] once forgotten the rules of politeness, and showed the monster's hideous tail above water? No! Those who like may peep down under waves that are pretty transparent and see it writhing and twirling, diabolically hideous and slimy, flapping amongst bones, or curling around corpses, but above the waterline, I ask, has not everything been proper?"It frankly feels like Thackeray is punishing Becky for taking over the book that he'd tried to take over himself. He sounds confused: like he wishes the whole novel was a moral one, and realizes only now that it's failed to be that. (Remember, this book couldn't be retooled; it was released in installments, and everyone had already read the rest of them.)

      Consider also the ending. Becky has a moment of magnanimity and reconciles Dobbins and Amelia. Then she turns around and murders Jos. (Don't try to argue that she didn't murder him. Thackeray may not say it, but he leaves little doubt.) Which feels more honest to you? Which feels like something Becky would do? She's a calculating, immoral woman who may have been (but probably wasn't) involved in countless affairs by this time, but did you get the sense that she's a murderess? Thackeray's book has gotten away from him, and he's betraying her in an attempt to snatch it back.

      Compare this with Middlemarch, also a landmark realist novel, and also one released in installments, but one in which it's perfectly clear that Eliot had the entire plot, thread by thread, perfectly planned from the beginning. Eliot never lets her book get away from her. And when I say that, and when you consider the fact that Middlemarch includes no character as compelling as Becky Sharp - she would have despised Dorothea - it sounds like Vanity Fair might be more fun than Middlemarch, but it's not. Thackeray's sense of human nature isn't as strong as Eliot's (or as Tolstoy's), and the novel isn't as satisfying.

      It's good, because Becky Sharp escaped from somewhere in Thackeray's brain and took it from him. What doesn't belong to her is just okay.
    • 4/5
      Thackeray's novel without a hero, a story of the manners and morality of society in the years around the Battle of Waterloo, is a respected and admired classic, and also - perhaps more importantly - a document of the time. Like the other writers of his period, Thackeray is more than happy to digress, to follow a tangent away from his story to describe a time or place, and like Hugo's 'Les Miserables' it is in these digressions that the most interesting details emerge.
    • 2/5
      Vanity Fair is about the adventures of the young Becky Sharp, born to humble circumstances but given certain opportunities to raise herself, which she takes full advantage of, sometimes to her benefit, more often to her detriment. As heroine's go...well...she isn't one, hence the book's subtitle, "A Novel Without a Hero". It is written as social satire. For a man fully entrenched in Victorianism, the early part of the century provided a great deal of fodder for novel material. But there's nothing funny about it. The Napoleanic War, the fight for Social survival, the harsh realities of a class system, and thrown into this is the avaricious and scheming Becky Sharp, who takes advantage, and with a realism that at times persuades the reader to sympathise with her. In her path, however, she leaves a wake of ruin. Sympathies change, though, as the book progresses, and while, at first, we may have rooted for one non-heroine, by the end, we are rooting for quite another. The book has a happy-ish ending, with a sobering monologue to put all in its place and to cast a shade of reality over it. But one is left, at the conclusion, with the impression that Thackeray rather tired of his characters before he had quite completed his novel. Overall, it was an interesting look into a Victorian gentleman's view of the decades before him, but it is not by any means one of my favourite books of the era.
    • 5/5
      I couldn't believe how readable this was! Highly entertaining. A great view into the rise of the mercantile class in the early 19th century of London. Also paints an interesting set of portraits that show the ways one can live in that setting: avariciously, sympathetically, courageously, etc., and what the consequences might be.
    • 5/5
      Becky Sharpe is one of my all time favourite literary characters. I've read this book twice now, with different book clubs, 14 years apart, but the joy has not diminished. Those who finished the book were in thrall to Thackeray's mastery of the genre. A definite classic and a treat!
    • 4/5
      In discussing the origins of The Bonfire of the Vanities, his brilliant satire of the social and economic mores of New York City in the 1980s, Tom Wolfe was always quick to cite Thackeray’s Vanity Fair as his inspiration. Wolfe seemed particularly taken with that earlier work’s subtitle--A Novel Without a Hero--which he took to be a perfect characterization for the story that he himself wanted to tell. He even went so far as to arrange to have his work published in serial form in a magazine (Rolling Stone in Wolfe’s case), just as Thackeray did with his magnum opus a century and a half before. There can hardly be higher praise than that for one author to give to another.Vanity Fair itself owes a considerable debt to a classic work that preceded it by 150 years, John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. In that religious allegory, a person on the path to Heaven first had to pass through the town of Vanity in which there was a fair that appealed to all the basest traits of humanity: greed, infidelity, deceit, avarice, envy, duplicity, and so on. Thackeray saw this as an apt metaphor for his story of the state of English society at the time of the Napoleonic Wars and the dawn of the Victorian Age. In fact, the frame that begins and ends Vanity Fair has two young girls putting on a puppet show during which all of the action in the book takes place. Toward the end of the novel, the author even reveals himself to be the narrator of the tale, and a most unreliable one at that.If that level of historical detail is not absolutely necessary to summarize Vanity Fair, it is perhaps useful context for a prospective reader to understand what taking on this tome will entail. Because, make no mistake, this book requires a significant investment of time and attention to get through it to the end. It is indeed a meandering and occasionally sprawling tale, written in the style of a time far removed from what the modern audience is used to. But, it is also remarkably observant about the human condition as well as wickedly funny; those two things alone make reading it today well worthwhile. Further, in the character of Becky Sharp, Thackeray has created an anti-heroine for the ages—with her resilient and scheming nature, she could hold her own now just as well as she did back then.How the specific events in the story transpire is not the most important thing about the novel, serving as they do as the backdrop for the societal skewering that was the author’s true purpose. In short, Becky comes from an impoverished background in a culture where that is a serious impediment to advancement. Her school friend Amelia Sedley is from a well-to-do family, but she herself is a rather simple and unambitious girl. Both of these friends enter into disappointing marriages, Becky to a rich but rough-hewn fellow whose family disapproves of her while Amelia devotes herself to a philandering cad and ignores the less-dashing colleague who truly loves her. When Amelia’s family falls on hard economic times, it sets off chain of events that takes several hundred pages to unfold. In those pages, though, there is some real literary gold as Thackeray uses his razor-honed wit and gentle word play to expose a multitude of vanities and foibles as he saw them. I certainly can recommend this book, but only for those who understand what they are getting into first!
    • 4/5
      A favourite I have returned to on a number of occasions. Amoral she may be but I can't help but love Becky Sharp for her resourcefulness, especially when compared with the rather insipid Amelia. As a young woman without family or fortune she is forced to rely upon her own cunning to achieve a position in society.
    • 2/5
      The two stars I gave this reflect my own liking of the book, not the writing style or anything else. I couldn't finish this book. It was too cynical and depressing for me. None of the characters appealed. Life is too short, and I have too many other books to read. The one thing I did enjoy was Thackeray's description of society and the habits of the times, but again, his moralizing and condemning attitude grated on me at this time.