This book comes with an introduction and notes by Owen Knowles, Universityof Hull. Thackeray's upper-class Regency world is a noisy and jostlingcommercial fairground, predominantly driven by acquisitive greed andsoulless materialism, in which the narrator himself plays a brilliantlyversatile role as a serio-comic observer. Although subtitled 'A Novelwithout a Hero', Vanity Fair follows the fortunes of two contrasting butinter-linked lives. Through the retiring Amelia Sedley and the brilliantBecky Sharp, Thackeray examines the position of women in an intenselyexploitative male world.