Novel
Vanity Fair
William Makepeace Thackeray · 1848
Opening lines
While the present century was in its teens, and on one sunshiny morning in June, there drove up to the great iron gate of Miss Pinkerton's academy for young ladies, on Chiswick Mall, a large family coach, with two fat horses in blazing harness, driven by a fat coachman in a three-cornered hat and wig, at the rate of four miles an hour.
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
Two young girls leave the same boarding school on the same day. One is gentle, rich and loved by all; the other is an orphan without a penny, and she throws out of the carriage window the dictionary she has just been given. Invited to her friend's home, she tries to seduce her friend's brother, who is rich and has returned from India, then is taken on as a governess by a country baronet, where she makes herself indispensable; the rich girl waits for an officer who loves her only moderately. Then the army leaves for Brussels, and all these people follow it.
Context
Refused by several publishers, the book appeared from Bradbury and Evans in twenty numbers, nineteen monthly instalments the last of which was double, from January 1847 to July 1848, in yellow covers and with drawings by his own hand. It is the first of his works that he signed with his name, what he had published earlier having appeared without a name or under pseudonyms. The subtitle always cited appeared only in the bound volume of 1848; the cover of the instalments announced sketches of English society in pen and pencil.
Who it is for
A very long novel with many characters, which its subtitle defines as a novel without a hero; translated into French as early as 1855.
Prizes and reception
Slow to sell in its early serial instalments, it made its author famous without making him rich.
Sources for this page 11
The pages consulted to check this page.