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Vanity Fair (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

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by William Makepeace Thackeray




  Table of Contents

  FROM THE PAGES OF VANITY FAIR

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY

  THE WORLD OF WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY AND VANITY FAIR

  Introduction

  Dedication

  BEFORE THE CURTAIN

  CHAPTER I - Chiswick Mall

  CHAPTER II - In Which Miss Sharp and Miss Sedley Prepare to Open the Campaign

  CHAPTER III - Rebecca Is in Presence of the Enemy

  CHAPTER IV - The Green Silk Purse

  CHAPTER V - Dobbin of Ours

  CHAPTER VI - Vauxhall

  CHAPTER VII - Crawley of Queen‘s Crawley

  CHAPTER VIII - Private and Confidential

  CHAPTER IX - Family Portraits

  CHAPTER X - Miss Sharp Begins to Make Friends

  CHAPTER XI - Arcadian Simplicity

  CHAPTER XII - Quite a Sentimental Chapter

  CHAPTER XIII - Sentimental and Otherwise

  CHAPTER XIV - Miss Crawley at Home

  CHAPTER XV - In Which Rebecca‘s Husband Appears for a Short Time

  CHAPTER XVI - The Letter on the Pincushion

  CHAPTER XVII - How Captain Dobbin Bought a Piano

  CHAPTER XVIII - Who Played on the Piano Captain Dobbin Bought?

  CHAPTER XIX - Miss Crawley at Nurse

  CHAPTER XX - In Which Captain Dobbin Acts as the Messenger of Hymen

  CHAPTER XXI - A Quarrel About an Heiress

  CHAPTER XXII - A Marriage and Part of a Honeymoon

  CHAPTER XXIII - Captain Dobbin Proceeds on His Canvass

  CHAPTER XXIV - In Which Mr. Osborne Takes Down the Family Bible

  CHAPTER XXV - In Which All the Principal Personages Think Fit to Leave Brighton

  CHAPTER XXVI - Between London and Chatham

  CHAPTER XXVII - In Which Amelia Joins Her Regiment

  CHAPTER XXVIII - In Which Amelia Invades the Low Countries

  CHAPTER XXIX - Brussels

  CHAPTER XXX - ‘The Girl I Left Behind Me‘

  CHAPTER XXXI - In Which Jos Sedley Takes Care of His Sister

  CHAPTER XXXII - In Which Jos Takes Flight, and the War Is Brought to a Close

  CHAPTER XXXIII - In Which Miss Crawley‘s Relations Are Very Anxious About Her

  CHAPTER XXXIV - James Crawley‘s Pipe Is Put Out

  CHAPTER XXXV - Widow and Mother

  CHAPTER XXXVI - How to Live Well on Nothing a Year

  CHAPTER XXXVII - The Subject Continued

  CHAPTER XXXVIII - A Family in a Very Small Way

  CHAPTER XXXIX - A Cynical Chapter

  CHAPTER XL - In Which Becky Is Recognized By the Family

  CHAPTER XLI - In Which Becky Revisits the Halls of Her Ancestors

  CHAPTER XLII - Which Treats of the Osborne Family

  CHAPTER XLIII - In Which the Reader Has to Double the Cape

  CHAPTER XLIV - A Roundabout Chapter Between London and Hampshire

  CHAPTER XLV - Between Hampshire and London

  CHAPTER XLVI - Struggles and Trials

  CHAPTER XLVII - Gaunt House

  CHAPTER XLVIII - In Which the Reader Is Introduced to the Very Best of Company

  CHAPTER XLIX - In Which We Enjoy Three Courses and a Dessert

  CHAPTER L - Contains a Vulgar Incident

  CHAPTER LI - In Which a Charade Is Acted Which May or May Not Puzzle the Reader

  CHAPTER LII - In Which Lord Steyne Shows Himself in a Most Amiable Light

  CHAPTER LIII - A Rescue and a Catastrophe

  CHAPTER LIV - Sunday After the Battle

  CHAPTER LV - In Which the Same Subject Is Pursued

  CHAPTER LVI - Georgy Is Made a Gentleman

  CHAPTER LVII - Eothen

  CHAPTER LVIII - Our Friend the Major

  CHAPTER LIX - The Old Piano

  CHAPTER LX - Returns to the Genteel World

  CHAPTER LXI - In Which Two Lights Are Put Out

  CHAPTER LXII - Am Rhein

  CHAPTER LXIII - In Which We Meet an Old Acquaintance

  CHAPTER LXIV - A Vagabond Chapter

  CHAPTER LXV - Full of Business and Pleasure

  CHAPTER LXVI - Amantium Irae

  CHAPTER LXVII - Which Contains Births, Marriages, and Deaths

  ENDNOTES

  AN INSPIRATION FOR VANITY FAIR

  COMMENTS & QUESTIONS

  FOR FURTHER READING

  FROM THE PAGES OF VANITY FAIR

  The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. (page 12)

  A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry WHOM SHE LIKES. (page 27)

  There was no little fellow but had his jeer and joke at Dobbin; and he bore everything quite patiently, and was entirely dumb and miserable. (page 38)

  I know that the tune I am piping is a very mild one (although there are some terrific chapters coming presently), and must beg the good-natured reader to remember, that we are only discoursing at present about a stockbroker’s family in Russell Square, who are taking walks, or luncheon, or dinner, or talking, and making love as people do in common life, and without a single passionate and wonderful incident to mark the progress of their loves. The argument stands thus—Osborne, in love with Amelia, has asked an old friend to dinner and to Vauxhall—Jos Sedley is in love with Rebecca. Will he marry her? That is the great subject now at hand. (page 48)

  Sir Pitt Crawley was a philosopher with a taste for what is called low life. (page 79)

  ‘Matilda must leave me half her money.’ (page 93)

  ‘Oh, sir—I—I’m married already.’ (page 144)

  Everybody in Vanity Fair must have remarked how well those live who are comfortably and thoroughly in debt: how they deny themselves nothing; how jolly and easy they are in their minds. (page 212)

  ‘There’s no quarrelling, bickering, slandthering, nor small talk amongst us. We all love each other.‘ (page 258)

  No more firing was heard at Brussels—the pursuit rolled miles away. Darkness came down on the field and city: and Amelia was praying for George, who was lying on his face, dead, with a bullet through his heart. (page 317)

  In the first place, and as a matter of the greatest necessity, we are bound to describe how a house may be got for nothing a year. (page 361) ‘A person can’t help their birth.’ (page 408)

  ‘My dear sir, you ought to know that every elder brother looks upon the cadets of the house as his natural enemies, who deprive him of so much ready money which ought to be his by right.’ (page 459)

  I know few things more affecting than that timorous debasement and self-humiliation of a woman. (pages 488—489)

  Which of the dead are most tenderly and passionately deplored? Those who love the survivors the least, I believe. (page 596)

  Ah! vanitas Vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied? (page 680)

  Published by Barnes & Noble Books

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  Vanity Fair was serialized in monthly parts between January 1847 and July

  1848, and published in volume form in 1848.

  Published in 2003 by Barnes & Noble Classics with new Introduction, Notes,Biography,

  Chronology, Inspired By, Comments & Questions, and For Further Reading.

  Introduction, Notes, and For Further Reading

  Copyright @ 2003 by Nicolas Dames.

  Note on William Makepeace Thackeray, The World of William Makepeace Thackeray

  a
nd Vanity Fair, An Inspiration for Vanity Fair, and Comments & Questions

  Copyright @ 2003 by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

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  Barnes & Noble Classics and the Barnes & Noble Classics colophon are

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  Vanity Fair

  ISBN-13: 978-1-59308-071-6 ISBN-10: 1-59308-071-9

  eISBN : 978-1-411-43340-3

  LC Control Number 2003109504

  Produced and published in conjunction with:

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  Printed in Mexico

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  5 7 9 10 8 6

  WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY

  William Makepeace Thackeray was born on July 18, 1811, in Calcutta, India. His father, an officer for the East India Company, died when William was a young boy, and he was sent to England to live with his aunt and attend school. Never much of a student, William left Trinity College, Cambridge, after two years and traveled to Germany. When he returned to England, he began to study law at London’s Middle Temple, but in 1832, when he received an inheritance from his father, he dropped out to pursue the life of a writer and artist; beginning in 1834, he lived in Paris for three years.

  Back in London, he began to contribute regularly to various periodicals, including the Times, Fraser‘s, the Morning Chronicle, the New Monthly Magazine, and Punch. At first he published anonymously or under a pseudonym; Michael Angelo Titmarsh, George Savage FitzBoodle, Jeames de la Pluche, and Ikey Solomons were among the pen names he used. The Paris Sketch Book (1840) was his first book-length publication and The Irish Sketch Book (1843) the first volume to be published under his own name.

  The successful serial publication of Vanity Fair (1847-1848) in Punch placed Thackeray at the forefront of the British literary scene. The response to the first chapters was lukewarm, but this satire of upper-middle-class life in early-nineteenth-century England quickly became a critical and popular success. The book’s heroine, Becky Sharp, remains one of the most memorable heroines in British fiction.

  Like Vanity Fair, most of Thackeray’s work first appeared in “numbers,” or installments, including The Snobs of England, by One of Themselves (1846—1847), the semi-autobiographical Pendennis (1848-1850), its sequel The Newcomes (1853-1855), and The Virginians (1857-1859). One exception, The History of Henry Esmond (1852), a historical novel, was initially published in three volumes. Thackeray’s work and that of his contemporary Charles Dickens have often been compared.

  William Makepeace Thackeray portrayed the society and personages of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England with sardonic wit and eloquence. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage on Christmas Eve 1863, leaving unfinished the historical romance Denis Duval.

  THE WORLD OF WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY AND VANITY FAIR

  1811 William Makepeace Thackeray is born on July 18 in Calcutta, India, into a wealthy merchant family. Soon after his birth, his fa ther is appointed to a lucrative position as a collector for the East India Company.

  1816 Following his father’s sudden death, William is sent to live with his aunt in Chiswick, England.

  1817 William enrolls in Chiswick Mall, a private boarding school that he detests.

  1820 His mother, having remarried, returns to England.

  1822 He transfers to the Charterhouse School, a private boarding school in Smithfield, where he endures canings and other disci pline. He prefers the popular fictions of the day to the classical lit erature the school teaches. Excused from physical activity because of his nearsightedness, he spends time drawing.

  1828 Thackeray enters Trinity College, Cambridge, where he is happier as a student but still largely uninterested in the curriculum.

  1830 He leaves Cambridge without a degree and travels to Weimar, Germany, the intellectual capital of Europe, where he becomes ac quainted with German Romantic literature and meets its guiding spirit, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. His observations of court life in Germany will provide material for his description of the princi pality of Pumpernickel in Vanity Fair; that book also reflects a skepticism about religious doctrine that grew during this trip.

  1831 Thackeray returns to England and enters London’s Middle Tem ple to study law. He meets William Maginn, an editor, who gives him his first work as a journalist.

  1832 Now twenty-one, Thackeray receives an inheritance from his fa ther of about 20,000 pounds.

  1833 Thackeray abandons his studies, invests part of his fortune in the newspaper The National Standard, and travels to Paris as its corre spondent; the paper fails after two years, an experience that will provide material for his novel The Newcomes. Thackeray loses his fortune through gambling and speculation; most of the loss results from the failure of an Indian bank in which he had invested.

  1834 Thackeray settles in Paris to study art.

  1836 While working in Paris as a correspondent for his stepfather’s newspaper The Constitutional, Thackeray marries seventeen-year old Isabella Shawe.

  1837 Thackeray gives up the bohemian life of an artist and returns to England with his new wife. His first daughter is born. The Consti tutional goes bankrupt, leaving him without a steady job. He be gins to contribute literary sketches and illustrations to Fraser’s Magazine; his satire The Yellowplush Correspondence, in which a footman, Charles Jeames Yellowplush, offers social and political observations, appears in Fraser’s beginning this year. For the next ten years, he writes for various London periodicals, including the Times, Fraser‘s, the Morning Chronicle, the New Monthly Magazine, and Punch. At first he publishes anonymously or under a comic assumed name; among his pseudonyms are Michael Angelo Titmarsh, George Savage FitzBoodle, Jeames de la Pluche, and Ikey Solomons.

  1838 His second daughter is born but dies eight months later.

  1840 Shortly after the birth of a third daughter, Thackeray’s wife suffers a mental breakdown. Thackeray sends his daughters to Paris to live with his parents, while he remains in London to raise money for his family’s expenses. For the next several years, he travels be tween London and Paris; he visits French asylums where he hopes Isabella’s mental condition might be cured. He publishes his first full-length volume, The Paris Sketch Book, a collection of essays and observations.

  1841 He publishes The Great Hoggarty Diamond, a mock-heroic tale about a gem that causes bad luck, narrated by Michael Angelo Tit marsh.

  1843 The Irish Sketch Book is Thackeray’s first work published under his own name.

  1844 Thackeray publishes The Luck of Barry Lyndon, which in 1856 will be published in a revised version as The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon. He travels to the Far East.

  1846 Upon his return from the Far East, he publishes Notes of a Jour ney from Cornhill to Grand Cairo. Placing his wife in the care of a family in Essex, Thackeray purchases a home in London for him self and his daughters. He becomes emotionally attached to Mrs. Jane Brookfield, the wife of a friend. His popular sketches of Lon don characters, The Snobs of England, by One of Themselves, ap pear in Punch and will continue in 1847.

  1847 Publication of Vanity Fair in monthly installments begins in Punch.

  1848 The serialization of Vanity Fair is completed, and the novel is pub lished in book form; subtitled A Novel without a Hero, the satire quickly becomes a best-seller and elevates Thackeray to the rank of major novelist. The Book of Snobs appears in book form. Pen dennis, a partly autobiographical novel, begins to appear in install ments.

  1850 Pendennis appears in book form. Thackeray’s friendly rival Charles Dickens publishes David Copperfield.

  1851 Thackeray and Dickens are compared
in the May issue of the North British Review. Thackeray ends his relationship with Mrs. Brookfield.

  1852 He publishes The History of Henry Esmond and begins a success ful tour of the United States delivering the lecture series English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century (published 1853).

  1853 The Newcomes, the sequel to Pendennis, begins serial publication.

  1855 The Newcomes is published in book form. Thackeray begins a sec ond successful lecture series in the United States titled The Four Georges (published 1860); its subject is the Hanoverian kings of the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. He publishes The Rose and the Ring, a Christmas book.

  1857 The Virginians, a sequel to Henry Esmond set partly in America, begins to be published in installments. Thackeray runs for a seat in parliament but is not elected.

  1860 He becomes the first editor of Cornhill Magazine, in which Lovel the Widower and The Adventures of Philip on His Way through the World, the last of the Arthur Pendennis trilogy, will be serialized.

  1863 The Roundabout Papers, a collection of essays that appeared in Cornhill Magazine, is published. William Makepeace Thackeray dies of a cerebral hemorrhage on Christmas Eve at his new estate in Palace Gardens, leaving a historical romance, Denis Duval, un finished. He is buried at Kensal Green Cemetery on December 30; an estimated 2,000 mourners, including Dickens, attend the fu neral. A commemorative bust stands at Westminster Abbey.

 

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