William Makepeace Thackeray

William Thackeray Retold by James Butler Activities by Kenneth Brodey Human interest Amelia Sedley and Becky Sharp are two friends. Amelia comes from a wealthy family but her father is made bankrupt. She marries George Osborne, a vain and shallow young man who does not really love her. Becky Sharp, on the other hand, comes from a penniless family, and is determined to use her beauty and charm to find a good position in life. Dossiers: Thackeray and Waterloo A Critic''s Assessment of Vanity Fair Exit test

This edition of one of the greatest social satires of the English language reproduces the text of the Oxford Thackeray and includes all of Thackeray''s own illustrations. William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) was an English novelist famous for his satirical works.

VANITY FAIR, Thackeray's panoramic, satirical saga of corruption at all levels of English society, was published in 1847 but set during the Napoleonic Wars. It chronicles the lives of two women who could not be more different: Becky Sharp, an orphan whose only resources are her vast ambitions, her native wit, and her loose morals; and her schoolmate Amelia Sedley, a typically naive Victorian heroine, the pampered daughter of a wealthy family. Becky's fluctuating fortunes eventually bring her to an affair with Amelia's dissolute husband; when he is killed at Waterloo, Amelia and her child are left penniless, while Becky and her husband Rawdon Crawley rise in the world, managing to lead a high life in London solely on the basis of their shrewdness. (The chapter entitled "How to Live on Nothing" is a classic.) Thackeray's subtitle, "A Novel Without a Hero," is understating the case; his view of humanity in this novel is distinctly bleak and deliberately antiheroic. Critics of the time misunderstood the book, decrying it as (among other things) vicious, vile, and odious. But VANITY FAIR has endured as one of the great comic novels of all time, and a landmark in the history of realism in fiction.

Thackeray's panoramic, satirical saga of corruption at all levels of English society, was published in 1847 but set during the Napoleonic Wars. It chronicles the lives of two women who could not be more different: Becky Sharp, an orphan whose only resources are her vast ambitions, her native wit, and her loose morals; and her schoolmate Amelia Sedley, a typically naive Victorian heroine, the pampered daughter of a wealthy family. Becky's fluctuating fortunes eventually bring her to an affair with Amelia's dissolute husband; when he is killed at Waterloo, Amelia and her child are left penniless, while Becky and her husband Rawdon Crawley rise in the world, managing to lead a high life in London solely on the basis of their shrewdness. (The chapter entitled "How to Live on Nothing" is a classic.) Thackeray's subtitle, "A Novel Without a Hero," is understating the case; his view of humanity in this novel is distinctly bleak and deliberately antiheroic. Critics of the time misunderstood the book, decrying it as (among other things) vicious, vile, and odious. But VANITY FAIR has endured as one of the great comic novels of all time, and a landmark in the history of realism in fiction.

With a specially commissioned afterword, the "Collector''s Library" series includes a brief biography of the author, and a further reading list. This edition contains an afterword by Henry Hitchings.

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 whatever the cost...

Ésta es la historia de Becky Sharp, una joven muy bella, muy lista y muy ambiciosa, consagrada en cuerpo y alma a escalar peldaños en la competitiva sociedad inglesa de principios del siglo XIX. Becky esta enamorada del placer, del lujo, del dinero, de las fiestas, de la alta posicion social, y pondra en juego todas sus armas para conseguirlo. Recien terminados sus estudios en una escuela de señoritas de buena posicion, y habiendo aprendido a cultivar las relaciones adecuadas, Becky se lanza a la Feria de las Vanidades mundanas dispuesta a convertirse en una de las cortesanas mas deslumbrantes.El retrato de esta inolvidable esnob, de esta arribista sin escrupulos abriendose paso en un avispero en plena ebullicion, se pinta sobre el telon de fondo de las guerras napoleonicas y se completa con una abigarrada galeria de personajes, con los que Thackeray teje uno de los tapices morales mejor diseñados de la narrativa universal. Los valores que definirian la Inglaterra victoriana aparecen satirizados con toda crudeza en esta obra maestra.

"Los Timmins viven en un vecindario muy refinado, y no es necesario decir que son de buena familia. Ella, que cree que su cariñoso marido tiene un despacho de abogados próspero y nada en la abundancia, decidio organizar una cena con lo mas exclusivo de la vieja sociedad londinense. Quiso demostrar que en su pequeño hogar podia celebrar la mejor velada de la ciudad. ¿Veinte personas en una mesa donde tan solo caben diez? ¿Que hacer con las viejas amistades si no estan a la altura? ¿Como proceder con los familiares menos favorecidos? ¿Y como conseguir vajilla y servicio para tantos? ¿Cocinero y mayordomo de alquiler? Ay, las infulas de Rosa Timmins no pertenecen solo a aquella epoca, son tambien de la nuestra, quiza de alguno de nuestros vecinos, de alguno de nuestros conocidos."

A marvelous, incisive social satire that gleefully exposes the greed and corruption raging in England during the turmoil of the Napoleonic wars through its tracing of the changing fortunes of two unforgettable women. It is a comic masterpiece that still resonates today. "Re-reading "Vanity Fair," one realises what a brilliant innovation this was in the English novel," remarked V. S. Pritchett. "Thackeray is like the modern novelists who derive from James and Proust, in his power of dissecting (and of desiccating!) character." Generally considered to be his masterpiece, "Vanity Fair" is Thackeray's resplendent social satire that exposes the greed and corruption raging in England during the turmoil of the Napoleonic wars. Subtitled "A Novel Without a Hero," it traces the changing fortunes of two unforgettable women: the scheming opportunist Becky Sharp--one of literature's most resourceful, engaging, and amoral heroines--and her foil, the faithful, naive Amelia Sedley. Thackeray's subversive, comic attack on the hypocrisy and "dismal roguery" of an avaricious world resonates 150 years later with implications for our own times. "Thackeray is an urbane nineteenth-century guide and commentator in a portrait gallery that is for all time," observed Louis Auchincloss. "He is the restless inhabitant of a prudish age, nostalgic, discursive, anecdotal, sentimental, worldly-wise, now warning us, now making fun of us, now reproving us .... Thackeray's harshest criticism of humanity is simply the point where ours commences. His perception of self-interest in every act is the ABC of modem psychology."

Memorias y aventuras de Barry Lyndon (1844) recibe una vivificante influencia de la novela picaresca española del Siglo de Oro, que la emparenta con otras memorables novelas biográficas como Moll Flanders, Tom Jones o Tristram Shandy, aunque el caballero Lyndon no es propiamente un picaro del siglo XVIII, sino, como el mismo dice, un hombre de mundo. Y un hombre de mundo es aquel que es diestro en disciplinas tan dispares como la filosofia natural, o ciencia de la vida, la equitacion, la musica, el salto, el manejo de la espada, el conocimiento de un caballo, los modos de un caballero distinguido..., aunque sus enemigos, que son los nuestros, podrian perfectamente tacharle de ladron, estafador, jugador de ventaja, duelista, matasiete, embustero, traidor, y, si la situacion asi lo requiere, de secuestrador e incluso asesino. La nostalgia, un tanto parodica, del Antiguo Regimen recorre estas memorias del caballero Barry Lyndon plagadas de lances, aventuras y viajes.