Vanity Fair

William Makepeace Thackeray was born on 18 July 1811 in Calcutta in India. After studying at Trinity College Cambridge he worked as a journalist and studied Art in London and Paris. In 1836 he married Isabella Shawe and they went on to have three daughters, one of whom died in infancy. He first found literary success with The Yellowplush Papers in 1837 and went on to write other works such asThe FitzBoodle Papers, Catherine, The Luck of Barry Lyndon and The Snobs of England before he published his masterpiece, Vanity Fair, in 1847. William Makepeace Thackeray died on Christmas Eve in 1863.

There are no wholly admirable characters, but you can't help feeling a sort of twisted respect for the gloriously awful social climber Becky Sharp, and a bit of sympathy for the lumpen, love-struck Dobbin. In fact all the characters are alive in their awfulness, and it's no small measure of skill that Thackery can make the reader care so much about such ghastly people. I suppose part of the appeal is that their weaknesses and pretensions are still recognisable today.