Vanity Fair

  • Author William Makepeace Thackeray
  • Narrator Frederick Davidson
  • Run Time 1 day, 5 hours and 52 minutes
  • Format Audio
  • Genre Classic fiction.
Get in the xigxag app
This book is not purchasable in your country. Please select another book.
Pre-order Buy Now £{{ price }}
How does xigxag pricing work?

Listen to a sample

What to expect

“Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?”

Generally considered to be Thackeray’s masterpiece, Vanity Fair is a 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 but naïve Amelia Sedley. Amid the swirl of London’s posh ballrooms and affairs of love and war, their fortunes rise and fall. Thackeray’s subversive, comic attack on the hypocrisy and “dismal roguery” of an avaricious world still resonates, more than 150 years later, with implications for our own times.

Critics Review

  • “The Ur-text of toxic female friendship, and the template for fictive female
    relationships from Gone With the Wind
    to Gossip Girl, the
    story of a sweet — but dim — heiress and her ruthlessly amoral social-striving
    best friend takes our two, deeply different heroines, through the whirlwind of
    Napoleonic War-era England. While Amelia Sedley marries an undeserving cad but
    closes her eyes to the truth, Becky Sharp remains flint-eyed: sleeping and
    conniving her way to the top of the social heap. The novel’s final image: the
    two women meeting on opposite sides of the titular charity-fair-table, their
    diverging paths through life rendering them ultimately equal, challenges us to
    wonder what way is best.”

    Electric Literature

  • “Vanity Fair, though it does not include the whole extent of Thackeray’s genius, is the most vigorous exhibition of its leading characteristics…There is not a person in the book who excites the reader’s respect, and not one who fails to excite his interest.”

    Atlantic

More from the same

Author

Narrator

Subscribe to our newsletter

Sign up to get tailored content recommendations, product updates and info on new releases. Your data is your own: we commit to protect your data and respect your privacy.