Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair was a published as a serial during 1847- 48 by William Makepeace Thackeray. An English journalist and novelist who specialized in satire, Thackeray also published works under pseudonyms such as Michael Angelo Titmarsh and George Savage Fitzboodle. His novel Vanity Fair derives its title from a location in Bunyan's allegorical work, A Pilgrim's Progress, which features an endless fair of sin and vice meant to distract man from his higher nature. Whereas Bunyan's was a prolonged indictment of the bleakness of human nature, Thackeray's work was more a work of entertainment, one which became an immediate critical hit. It is to this day considered a treasured work of English literature. In the era of monthly installments with cliffhanger chapters (for which Dan Brown would make a bagillion dollars doing), Vanity Fair ruled the day. It's a grande soap opera; a literary Sex in the City. It hooked the whole reading public of London for a year and a half and propelled Thackeray to fame.