Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero.

THACKERAY, William Makepeace.

Item Number: 129337

London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1869.

Finely bound example of Thackeray’s masterpiece. Octavo, 2 volumes, bound in full red crushed red morocco by Sangorski and Sutcliffe with gilt titles and tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, double gilt ruling and fleuron cornerpieces to the front and rear panels, gilt turn-ins and inner dentelles, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt, illustrated. In fine condition. A very attractive set.

Vanity Fair was Thackeray’s first major work and established his continued high standing among Victorian novelists. “After that book [Vanity Fair] there could be no doubt about the greatness of its writer… at last the novel of real life on the great scale has been discovered” (Saintsbury, in Grolier, English Prose Fiction, 102). “As Thackeray’s masterpiece this novel has outlasted the great majority of his work… The Waterloo scenes are among the best narrative passages in an English novel. Of her type, Becky has never been bettered, and the author’s famed irony still stings” (Farrow, 50). It has been the subject of numerous television and film adaptations, most recently into the 2004 film directed by Mira Nair, starring Reese Witherspoon, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Bob Haskins.