William Makepeace Thackeray
Vanity Fair
VANITY FAIR
Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of falseness and pretence. It is a place where you gamble and get into debt, and wait for your rich aunt to die. A place where you swear undying love to your sweetheart, and write a love letter to someone else the next day. It is a place where cunning and lies bring rewards. It is a place where men go to war, and women fall in love, a place of laughter, tears, danger, and excitement … It is 1815 in London and Brighton, Brussels and Paris.
Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley are starting out on the great adventure of Vanity Fair. Each will find a husband, but how long will it last? Who will wear diamonds, who will go hungry? Will they be faithful, foolish, neglected, devoted? Who will sew banknotes into her dress and follow a victorious army to Paris? Who will go home to her mother and weep in misery? And their friends and relations … Will Joseph Sedley be a fool all his life? Will Rawdon Crawley learn the truth? Will William Dobbin get his heart’s desire?
‘Oh, the vanity and folly of human wishes! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has our heart’s desire? Or, having it, is satisfied?’
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