William Makepeace Thackeray wrote Victorian fiction and satire about ambition, money and the social performance required to move through class-conscious society. Vanity Fair follows Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley through marriages, war, financial reversals and social climbing during the Napoleonic era, with an intrusive narrator repeatedly commenting on the characters and the reader. The History of Henry Esmond moves into historical fiction, while Barry Lyndon uses an unreliable adventurer's memoir to expose vanity and self-deception. Thackeray's prose is ironic, digressive and socially observant rather than fast-paced. His work fits Victorian satire, novels of manners and nineteenth-century historical fiction. Vanity Fair is the defining entry point for his social satire and narrator-driven style. Vanity Fair is the essential starting point and suits readers comfortable with a narrator who interrupts, judges and jokes about his own characters; Barry Lyndon pushes unreliability further by allowing its self-serving protagonist to tell his own story. Read more Less
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