• Title: Thackeray’s Works: Vanity Fair Vol. 2
• Author: William Thackeray
• Publisher: J.B. Lippincott and Co.
• Estimated year of printing: 1873 

Notes:

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811 – 1863) was an English novelist and illustrator.  He was born in Calcutta, British India, where his father worked for the East India Company.  

After moving to England and starting a family, he had only inconsistent success until the publication of Vanity Fair, initially in serial form from January 1847 through July 1848.  Vanity Fair is a satire of 19th-century British society, following the lives of Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley during the Napoleonic Wars.  Even before it had completed its run, he had become a literary celebrity, being compared to Charles Dickens.  The title comes from John Bunyan’s novel The Pilgrim’s Progress, first published in 1678, referring to a step along the pilgrim’s route: a never-ending fair held in a town called Vanity.  The title of this book inspired 5 different, unrelated, magazine to also carry the name Vanity Fair between 1859 to the present day.

After the serial publication, this book was published many times, including this edition which is part of a collection of Thackeray’s works published after his death.  This is an attractive, finely bound edition showing marbling on the cover, endpapers, and edges.  This is unfortunately just volume 2 of a two-volume edition of the book.

He wrote several more large novels, none of which was as popular as Vanity Fair, which sustained his popularity.  He was known for having poor eating and exercise habits, which contributed to his early death from a stroke at the age of 52.