Mostrando resultados por autor "William Makepeace" en Todas las categorías

Set during the time of the Napoleonic Wars, this classic gives a satirical picture of a worldly society. The novel revolves around the exploits of the impoverished but beautiful and devious Becky Sharp who craves wealth and a position in society. Calculating and determined to succeed, she charms, deceives and manipulates everyone she meets. A novel of early 19th-century English society, it takes its title from the place designated as the centre of human corruption in John Bunyan's 17th-century allegory.

For an atheist it’s a great deal, though it does suggest atheism may have a weak point. For those of faith it’s a matter of jam now and purgatory tomorrow. A bargain many artists feel is something they can live with. For agnostics it’s usually a question of can the afterlife really be that bad, would workplace regulations reach all parts of heaven and hell. However, in this volume the terms are agreed and the Devil pays his fees and the character his dues, each happy to wait a few decades for the eternal payback.

Vanity Fair, with its rich cast of characters, takes place on the snakes-and-ladders board of life. Amelia Sedley, daughter of a wealthy merchant, has a loving mother to supervise her courtship. Becky Sharp, an orphan, has to use her wit, charm, and resourcefulness to escape from her destiny as a governess. This she does ruthlessly, musing: "I think I could become a good woman, if I had £5,000 a year."

Napoleon has England on edge. For the cunning and conniving Becky Sharp, it’s an opportunity to take advantage of the chaos and improve her lowly station. Her friend Amelia Sedley, a blue-blood pawn, affords Becky entrée into the moneyed class. As the guileless Amelia pines for a rakish soldier, the ruthless Becky climbs upward, setting the stage for a domestic battlefield of greed, ambition, deception, and dizzying reversals of love and fortune.

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 are fought, fortunes made and lost. The one steadfast and honourable figure in this corrupt world is Dobbin, bringing pathos and depth to Thackeray's gloriously satirical epic of love and social adventure.

Generally considered to be his masterpiece, Vanity Fair is Thackeray's resplendent social satire that exposes the greed and corruption raging in England during the turmoil of the Napoleonic wars. Subtitled "A Novel Without a Hero", it traces the changing fortunes of two unforgettable women: the scheming opportunist Becky Sharp, one of literature's most resourceful, engaging, and amoral heroines, and her foil, the faithful, naive Amelia Sedley.

Set in the reign of Queen Anne, Thackeray's novel follows the troubled progress of Henry Esmond Esq, a gentleman and an officer in Marlborough's army. Enamoured of the Jacobite Lady Castlewood and her wayward daughter Beatrix, he distinguishes himself in Marlborough's campaigns against Louis XIV, but comes to grief in an ingenious but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to depose George I in favour of the Old Pretender.

Like Tom Jones before him, Barry Lyndon is one of the most lively and roguish characters in English literature. He may now be best known through the colorful Stanley Kubrick film released in 1975, but it is Thackeray who, in true 19th-century style, shows him best.

The British Classics Collection – Volume 2 steps into the grand world of 18th, 19th, and 20th-century British literature to create a compelling anthology featuring iconic works that span time and genres. From the whimsy of Alice in Wonderland to the mystery of The Woman in White, the philosophical insights of The Waste Land and the unforgettable detective stories of Sherlock Holme, this volume offers a rich variety of British literary masterpieces.

The London Classics Collection: Stories of the City allows you to step into the heart of London with a curated selection of iconic literary works that explore the soul of one of the world's most fascinating cities. From the smoky alleys of Victorian London to the political upheavals of the 20th century, this collection brings together stories that capture the city's rich history, diverse characters, and unflinching reflections on society.

Best known today for his comic masterpiece, Vanity Fair, W. M. Thackeray was regarded in his time as the only rival to his contemporary, Charles Dickens. This collection includes a selection of his finest satirical fiction, as well as two fascinating programmes exploring his life and writings.

The London Classics Collection: Stories of the City allows you to step into the heart of London with a curated selection of iconic literary works that explore the soul of one of the world's most fascinating cities. From the smoky alleys of Victorian London to the political upheavals of the 20th century, this collection brings together stories that capture the city's rich history, diverse characters, and unflinching reflections on society.

Stephen Fry narrates this full-cast dramatisation of the famous Victorian comic novel, a portrait of English society and its mores, with Emma Fielding as Becky Sharp. Duration: 5 hours approx.

Barry Lyndon, first serialized in 1844, is a swashbuckling romp through the aristocratic Europe of the 18th century. The central character, a roguish Irishman, narrates most of the story in the first person, relating his adventures as a soldier in both the British and Prussian armies; as a gambler and confidence man under the guidance of his uncle, a practiced fraud; and as a fortune hunting gigolo in search of wealthy widows and heiresses.

One of the great Victorian novels by an author at the height of his powers, Vanity Fair follows the fortunes of the calculating, upwardly-mobile Becky Sharp and her gentle, good-hearted friend Amelia Sedley as they leave their boarding school and embark upon their lives in Vanity Fair–the social-climbing, wealth-obsessed world of Regency England in the time of the Napoleonic Wars.

Vanity Fair features two heroines: the faithful, loyal Amelia Sedley, and the beautiful and scheming social climber Becky Sharp. It also engages a huge cast of wonderful supporting characters as the novel spins from Miss Pinkerton's academy for young ladies to affairs of love and war on the Continent to liaisons in the dazzling ballrooms of London.

This book comes with an introduction and notes by Owen Knowles, University of Hull. Thackeray's upper-class Regency world is a noisy and jostling commercial fairground, predominantly driven by acquisitive greed and soulless materialism, in which the narrator himself plays a brilliantly versatile role as a serio-comic observer. Although subtitled 'A Novel without a Hero', "Vanity Fair" follows the fortunes of two contrasting but inter-linked lives.

Assembled and edited by Julian Hawthorne and first published in 1907, the Old Time English volume of The Lock and Key Library features ten classic mysteries and ghost stories by Charles Dickens, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Thomas de Quincey, Charles Robert Maturin, Laurence Sterne, and William Makepeace Thackeray. This volume of The Lock and Key Library is sure to haunt and charm fans of ghost and detective mysteries alike.

Barry Lyndon is a picaresque novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, first published as a serial in Fraser's Magazine in 1844, about a member of the Irish gentry trying to become a member of the English aristocracy. Thackeray, who based the novel on the life and exploits of the Anglo-Irish rake and fortune-hunter Andrew Robinson Stoney, later reissued it under the title The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq. The novel is narrated by Lyndon himself, who functions as a quintessentially unreliable narrator.

The Rose and The Ring is a satirical work of fantasy fiction by William Makepeace Thackeray, which was originally published in 1854. It is the tale of a fairy, a king of two kingdoms, their offspring, and an old woman. Set in the fictional countries of Paflagonia and Crim Tartary, it criticizes the attitudes of the British upper class and challenges their ideals of beauty and marriage. The story revolves around the lives and fortunes of four royal cousins, Princesses Angelica and Rosalba, and Princes Bulbo and Giglio. The narrative is filled with humor.