Audiobook · read by volunteers
Vanity Fair
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863)
Read by Michelle Crandall, Wendy G., Stacey Ford Osborne, Graham Williams, Betsie Bush, Guntar, Chris Peterson, Maureen S. O'Brien, rachelellen, JemmaBlythe · 67 chapters · 32 h 20
About the book
Becky Sharp has no money, no family and no patience for being poor, and she intends to claw her way into the best drawing rooms in England. Her friend Amelia Sedley is kind, trusting and a good deal less cunning. Around them, in the years of Waterloo and its aftermath, Thackeray builds a sprawling, comic and often cutting portrait of a society obsessed with rank, money and appearances. Vanity Fair is subtitled A Novel without a Hero, and its narrator never lets you forget it, commenting wryly on vice and folly while remaining fond of his characters. Sixty-seven chapters and more than thirty-two hours of listening, shared among ten readers, give you time to settle into the crowd of schemers, snobs, soldiers and dreamers. It is a long novel and a rich one, and its satire still feels sharp.
Introduction
William Makepeace Thackeray, who lived from 1811 to 1863, was one of the leading Victorian novelists, regarded in his own time as a rival to Charles Dickens. Vanity Fair, published in 1848, is generally considered his masterpiece. It first appeared in twenty monthly parts between January 1847 and July 1848, a format typical of the period, and was then issued as a single book.
The full title, Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero, tells you a good deal. Thackeray satirises English society in the early nineteenth century, a world where status and wealth matter more than virtue, and the central figures are flawed, funny and often surprising. The author wanted the book to entertain and also to instruct, an aim he stated in his letters as well as in the narration. He uses a chatty narrator who steps forward to address the reader, showing that he knows his characters well and sometimes distrusts them.
The novel is now counted among the classics of English literature, although some critics have noted structural weaknesses: Thackeray occasionally lost track of the enormous scope of the book and confused small details such as names. Most readers forgive these slips for the sake of its vitality.
This LibriVox recording has sixty-seven chapters and lasts a little over thirty-two hours, which makes it a major commitment and a great reward. It is shared among several volunteers, among them Michelle Crandall, Wendy G. and Stacey Ford Osborne. The satire is never merely bitter: Thackeray is generous toward his characters even when he laughs at them, and that mixture of mockery and sympathy is a large part of the book’s lasting appeal.
Public domain
William Makepeace Thackeray died in 1863: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text