Vanity Fair
by William Makepeace Thackeray · first published 1800
43% recommend50% neutral7% critical
Why HN recommends it
Long but surprisingly light satire of society, praised for its psychological insight into characters' self-deception and for a passage that captures cognitive dissonance; suits readers who enjoy classic literature.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
No one is better equipped in the struggle for wealth and worldly success than the alluring and ruthless Becky Sharp, who defies her impoverished background to clamber up the class ladder. Her sentimental companion Amelia, however, longs only for caddish soldier George. As the two heroines make their way through the tawdry glamour of Regency society, battles - military and domestic - are fought, fortunes made and lost. The one steadfast and honourable figure in this corrupt world is Dobbin with his devotion to Amelia, bringing pathos and depth to Thackeray's gloriously satirical epic of love an
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…https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/marcus-aurelius/meditation... - Don Quixote by Cervantes: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/miguel-de-cervantes-saaved... - Pride and Predudice by Jane Austen: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/jane-austen/pride-and-prej... - Vanity Fair by William Thackeray: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/william-makepeace-thackera... - David Copperfield by Charles Dickens: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/charles-dickens/david-copp... - Washington…
on “Harvard Classics Book Download” ↗I like Vanity Fair subscribe to the magazine. It's named after a 19th century novel by Thackeray, a satire on society. I find that the magazine, like the book, mocks society and points out it's flaws, being hypocritical…
on “Dubai on Empty ” ↗I'm almost at the end of Vanity Fair. It is long, surprisingly light, and psychologically astute. There's one passage where Thackeray nails the concept of cognitive dissonance so strikingly (100 years before Festinger) that it ought to be…
on “Ask HN: What are you reading? What've you read lately?” ↗The author of this article should read 'Vanity Fair' by Thackeray. It crystallizes the argument they're trying to make.
on “Twenty-first century Victorians” ↗I’m happy to see Standard Ebooks here! I’ve read their editions of Nostromo by Joseph Conrad and Vanity Fair by William Thackeray and the quality great. I recommend it if you’re interested in classic literature.
on “Standard Ebooks” ↗Not the original commenter but I'd include: Vanity Fair by Thackeray Mr Johnson by Joyce Cary Lavengro and Romany Rye by George Borrow The Descent of Woman by Elaine Morgan Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies by Douglas Hofstadter et al. Identity Crisis…
on “The Good Soldier Švejk (2018)” ↗…writing was quite pedestrian - much more like a good journalist than a great literary stylist. Thackeray, on the other hand, broke all of those rules (except perhaps the last) in almost every sentence in "Vanity Fair", and yet I know which I find the more pleasurable to read. I've also never put much stock in this notion of the evils of the passive voice - which thing Orwell himself seemingly struggled greatly to…
on “Write like you talk” ↗…as early as 1300, and many admired writers have used they, them, themselves, and their to refer to singular nouns such as one, a person, an individual, and each. W.M. Thackeray, for example, wrote in Vanity Fair in 1848, “A person can't help their birth,” and more recent writers such as George Bernard Shaw and Anne Morrow Lindbergh have also used this construction, in sentences such as “To do a person in means…
on “Google advised mental health care when workers complained about racism, sexism” ↗Vanity Fair by Thackeray. A bunch of David Grann essays from The New Yorker (on Instapaper; I'll buy copies of his book later).
on “Ask HN: What are you reading right now?” ↗…their long history, references to Consols can be found in many places, including literature such as Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, Howards End by E. M. Forster, Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray, Of Human Bondage by William Somerset Maugham and The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy and in economics."
on “Billions in bearer bonds could be lost due to Hurricane Sandy: sources” ↗…help them sleep when the doubts come, I tell them that she does love them, and always will so, but she's working on some challenges that make it hard for her to tell them in person. To quote Thackeray's Vanity Fair - "Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children." (She has supervised access, but won't use it because "she did nothing wrong", and using it appears to her, as an implicit acknowledgement…
on “Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died” ↗79. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
on “Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?” ↗…very short. They were very formative, they brought great writing in small digestible amounts to kids like me who would normally prefer to be reading say Scientific American than novels like Thackeray's Vanity Fair, which I recall I struggled to get through. I cannot understand why these wonderful essays seem to have fallen out of favor with educators. — Edit: Re stage directions as we have them are almost never…
on “My ranking of every Shakespeare play” ↗