Vanity Fair Format: Paperback

Set during the Napoleonic wars, Vanity Fair follows Becky Sharp as she cuts a swathe through Regency society. War, money, and national identity are the themes of Thackeray's great satirical novel, as it exposes a world on the make. In Becky, Thackeray created one of the most memorable female characters in Victorian fiction.

Helen Small was born in Wellington, New Zealand, and studied at Victoria University of Wellington and at the University of Cambridge. She taught English Literature at the University of Bristol from 1993 to 1996, and since 1996 has been Fellow in English at Pembroke College, Oxford. From 2001 to 2004 she held a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship, and was a Visiting Scholar at New York University.