William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair (1848)

From the heights of London society to the disreputable gaming tables of Weimar, from their repressive girls’ boarding school in Chiswick to the field of Waterloo, Vanity Fair (1848) follows the fortunes of its anti-heroine Becky Sharp and her put-upon best friend Amelia Sedley as they try to navigate their adult lives.

Vanity Fair offers a panoramic picture of society in the decades before Victoria came to the throne. It traces the triumphs and disasters of these dissimilar friends through marriage, motherhood, ruin and redemption, through a rollicking plot that combines sharp satire with elements of melodrama, domestic realism, and modern morality tale. Vanity Fair was Thackeray’s breakthrough novel, establishing him as one of the most celebrated novelist of his era, and it remains his best-known work.

Amongst an unforgettable cast of colourful minor characters, Becky Sharp stands out as a protagonist for the ages: resourceful, unscrupulous, and determined to do whatever it takes to climb out of the poverty into which she has been born. Subtitled A Novel Without A Hero, Vanity Fair offers a richly complex portrayal of its (anti-)heroines’ struggles, ultimately complicating the binary division between the angelic Amelia and the diabolical Becky, and casting a sceptical eye over the gendered pieties of the early Victorian era.

Live online lecture with Dr Clare Walker Gore, Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge.

Sunday 7 December 2025

18.00-20.00 British Time (GMT)
19.00-21.00 Central European Time
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Lecture fee
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