Books with author William Makepeace Thackeray

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace ThackerayHow is this book unique? Illustrations IncludedVanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero is a novel by English author William Makepeace Thackeray, first published in 1847–48, satirising society in early 19th-century Britain. It follows the lives of two women, Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley, amid their friends and family. The novel is now considered a classic, and has inspired several film adaptations. In 2003, Vanity Fair was listed at #122 on the BBC's The Big Read poll of the UK's best-loved books.

This book is an illustrated version of the original The Book of Snobs by William Makepeace Thackeray. “When a man has this sort of vocation it is all nonsense attempting to elude it. He must speak out to the nations; he must unbusm himself, as Jeames would say, or choke and die. 'Mark to yourself,' I have often mentally exclaimed to your humble servant, 'the gradual way in which you have been prepared for, and are now led by an irresistible necessity to enter upon your great labour. First, the World was made: then, as a matter of course, Snobs; they existed for years and years, and were no more known than America.”

Works of William Makepeace Thackeray with active table of contents. Works include:Adventures of Major GahaganBalladsThe Bedford-Row ConspiracyThe Book of SnobsBurlesquesCatherine: A StoryThe Christmas Books of Mr. M. A. TitmarshFatal BootsThe Fitz-Boodle PapersGeorge CruikshankThe Great Hoggarty DiamondHenry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four GeorgesThe History of Henry EsmondThe History of PendennisJohn Leech's Pictures of Life and CharacterA Little Dinner at Timmins'sLittle Travels and Roadside SketchesThe Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, EsqMen's WivesThe Newcomes, Memoirs of a Most Respectable FamilyNotes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand CairoThe Paris Sketch BookThe Rose and the RingRoundabout PapersThe Second Funeral of NapoleonSome Roundabout PapersBluebeard’s GhostVanity Fair, A Novel without a HeroThe VirginiansThe Wolves and the LambThe Yellowplush Papers, Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush

How is this book unique?Font adjustments & biography includedUnabridged (100% Original content)IllustratedAbout The Book of Snobs by William Makepeace Thackeray"The Book of Snobs is a collection of satirical works by William Makepeace Thackeray first published in the magazine Punch as The Snobs of England, By One of Themselves. Published in 1848, the book was serialised in 1846/47 around the same time as Vanity Fair. While the word 'snob' had been in use since the end of the 18th century Thackeray's adoption of the term to refer to people who look down on others who are ""socially inferior"" quickly gained popularity. William Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelist of the 19th century. He is known for his satirical works, particularly Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of English society. "

How is this book unique?Font adjustments & biography includedUnabridged (100% Original content)IllustratedAbout The History of Henry Esmond by William Makepeace ThackerayThe History of Henry Esmond is a historical novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, originally published in 1852. The book tells the story of the early life of Henry Esmond, a colonel in the service of Queen Anne of England. A typical example of Victorian historical novels, Thackeray's work of historical fiction tells its tale against the backdrop of late 17th- and early 18th-century England – specifically, major events surrounding the English Restoration — and utilises characters both real (but dramatised) and imagined. Plot: Using sporadically the first and third persons, Henry Esmond relates his own history in memoir fashion. The novel opens on Henry as a boy – the supposedly illegitimate (and eventually orphaned) son of Thomas, the third Viscount Castlewood, and cousin of the Jacobite fourth viscount, Francis, and his wife, the Lady Castlewood. These successors to the Castlewood estate and peerage, following the death of Henry's father, foster the boy, and he remains with them throughout his youth and early adulthood. A quiet, sober, hard-working youth, Henry is devoted to his foster family. Gentle, sensitive Lady Castlewood is his adored mother figure. Her husband is also kind to Esmond, but the hard-drinking viscount is clearly a man of limited intellect whose crude manners and thoughtless ways cause his wife a great deal of embarrassment and pain. Henry Esmond knows that his cousins—dull, good-natured Frank and sly, seductive Beatrix—will eventually inherit Castlewood. After the heartless Beatrix rejects his offer of marriage, he journeys to London to make his fortune. Esmond meets many of the celebrated English writers of the day, such as Joseph Addison and Richard Steele. Addison and Steele are both represented as model English gentlemen, who gladly mentor Esmond in his literary career, while the equally noted Jonathan Swift is depicted in most unflattering terms as a hateful misanthrope and bully. Particular venom is directed at Swift for the abundant leisure he had at the vicarage in Trim, County Meath for cultivating his garden, making a canal (after the Dutch fashion of Moor Park), and planting willows.

Between the kingdoms of Paflagonia and Crim Tartary, there lived a mysterious personage, who was known in those countries as the Fairy Blackstick, from the ebony wand or crutch which she carried; on which she rode to the moon sometimes, or upon other excursions of business or pleasure, and with which she performed her wonders. When she was young, and had been first taught the art of conjuring by the necromancer, her father, she was always practicing her skill, whizzing about from one kingdom to another upon her black stick, and conferring her fairy favors upon this Prince or that.

A deliciously satirical attack on a money-mad society, Vanity Fair, which first appeared in 1847, is an immensely moral novel, and an immensely witty one. Vanity Fair features two heroines: the faithful, loyal Amelia Sedley, and the beautiful and scheming social climber Becky Sharp. It also engages a huge cast of wonderful supporting characters as the novel spins from Miss Pinkerton's academy for young ladies to affairs of love and war on the Continent to liaisons in the dazzling ballrooms of London. William Makepeace Thackeray's forte is the bon mot, and it is amply exercised in a novel filled with memorably wicked lines. Lengthy and leisurely in pace, the novel follows the adventures of Becky and Amelia as their fortunes rise and fall, creating a tale both picaresque and risque. Thackeray mercilessly skewers his society, especially the upper class, poking fun at their shallow values and pointedly jabbing at their hypocritical "morals." His weapons, however, are not fire and brimstone but an unerring eye for the absurd and a genius for observing the foibles of his age. An enduring classic, this great novel is a brilliant study in duplicity and hypocrisy-and a mirror with which to view our own times.