"The novel takes place during the Napoleonic Wars and concerns the lives of two starkly contrasted girls: Becky Sharp, orphaned and poor but ingenious; and Amelia Sedley, sheltered daughter of a rich City merchant. These two meet at Miss Pinkerton<U+2019>s Academy for young ladies, the former driven by social ambition and the latter by her delicate heart. Sharp<U+2019>s adventures begin with an attempt to marry Jos Sedley, Amelia<U+2019>s brother, who is rich but dim. She soon finds her way to the Crawley household as a governess and marries Rawdon, the second son of Sir Pitt Crawley, although the father himself had proposed to her. Rawdon is, typically for the novel, an ignorant and self-indulgent man. However, Becky moves on further to become the mistress of Lord Steyne and finds her place in society almost accidentally in the end. Miss Sedley<U+2019>s story is less intriguing, largely due to useless first husband Osborne and moral by uninteresting second love Dobbin. Thackeray<U+2019>s portrait of the upper classes in the early nineteenth century is consistently disparaging and negative but is entertaining for its vile characters and hopeless, loveless relationships."--Bibliomania.
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Details
ISBN: 9780307291080 (2009 Premier Classics trade pbk.)
Physical Description:printxli, 743 p. ; 21 cm.
Publisher:New York : Everyman's Library/Alfred A. Knopf, 1991.
General Note: Originally published serially in London in 1847 and 1848.