Vanity Fair. William Thackeray

p>William Makepeace Thackeray

      Vanity Fair

      VANITY FAIR

      Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of falseness and pretence. It is a place where you gamble and get into debt, and wait for your rich aunt to die. A place where you swear undying love to your sweetheart, and write a love letter to someone else the next day. It is a place where cunning and lies bring rewards. It is a place where men go to war, and women fall in love, a place of laughter, tears, danger, and excitement … It is 1815 in London and Brighton, Brussels and Paris.

      Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley are starting out on the great adventure of Vanity Fair. Each will find a husband, but how long will it last? Who will wear diamonds, who will go hungry? Will they be faithful, foolish, neglected, devoted? Who will sew banknotes into her dress and follow a victorious army to Paris? Who will go home to her mother and weep in misery? And their friends and relations … Will Joseph Sedley be a fool all his life? Will Rawdon Crawley learn the truth? Will William Dobbin get his heart’s desire?

      ‘Oh, the vanity and folly of human wishes! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has our heart’s desire? Or, having it, is satisfied?’

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in

Oxford New York

Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto

With offices in

Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam

OXFORD and OXFORD ENGLISH are registered trade marks of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries

This simplified edition © Oxford University Press 2008

Database right Oxford University Press (maker)

First published in Oxford Bookworms 2004

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

No unauthorized photocopying

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the ELT Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above

You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer

Any websites referred to in this publication are in the public domain and their addresses are provided by Oxford University Press for information only. Oxford University Press disclaims any responsibility for the content

ISBN 978 0 19 479269 1

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The publishers would like to thank Mary Evans Picture Library for their permission to use the illustration on the title page. The illustrations on pages 9, 14, 23, 33, 41, 52, 60, 67, 76, 84, 94, 103, 118 are by kind permission of the Bodleian Library, Oxford. All illustrations are by William Makepeace Thackeray and are from the engravings in the 1847 edition of Vanity Fair

Word count (main text): 32,940 words

For more information on the Oxford Bookworms Library, visit www.oup.com/bookwormswww.oup.com/bookworms

e-Book ISBN 978 0 19 478631 7

e-Book first published 2012

      PEOPLE IN THIS STORY

      Miss Rebecca (Becky) Sharp

      Miss Amelia (Emmy) Sedley

      Mr Joseph (Jos) Sedley, Amelia’s brother

      Mr John Sedley, father of Amelia and Joseph

      Mrs Sedley, his wife

      Mr George Osborne, a lieutenant in the army; later, a captain

      Georgy, George’s son

      Mr John Osborne, father of George Osborne, and grandfather of Georgy

      Miss Jane Osborne, the elder of George’s sisters, and Georgy’s aunt

      Miss Maria Osborne, the younger of George’s sisters, and Georgy’s aunt

      Mr William Dobbin, a captain in the army; later, a major

      Miss Dobbin, William’s sister

      Sir Pitt Crawley, a baronet

      Mr Pitt (later, Sir Pitt) Crawley, Sir Pitt’s older son (by his first wife)

      Lady Jane Crawley, Pitt Crawley’s wife

      Mr Rawdon Crawley, Sir Pitt’s younger son (by his first wife), a captain in the army; later, a colonel

      Young Rawdon (Rawdy), Rawdon’s son

      Lady Crawley, Sir Pitt’s second wife, mother of Rose and Violet

      Miss Matilda Crawley, Sir Pitt’s unmarried sister, and Rawdon’s aunt

      Miss Briggs, paid companion to Miss Crawley

      Mr Bute Crawley, Sir Pitt’s brother

      Mrs Bute Crawley, Mr Bute’s wife

      Lord Steyne, a nobleman

      1

      The young ladies leave school

      One sunny morning in June, early in the 1800s, Miss Amelia Sedley and Miss Rebecca Sharp left school. The carriage which took them away from Miss Pinkerton’s school for young ladies was filled with gifts and flowers for Amelia, for everyone loved her; but nobody cried when Rebecca left.

      We are going to see a great deal of Amelia, so there is no harm in saying straight away that she was a dear little creature. She is not a heroine because her nose was rather short and her face was too round, though it shone with rosy health. She had a lovely smile and her eyes were bright with good humour, except when they were filled with tears, which happened a great deal too often because she had the kindest heart in the world. And when she left school she did not know whether to cry or not. She was glad to go home, but she was very sad to leave her friends at school.

      Well, at last the goodbyes were over and the carriage drove away. In her hand Amelia held a letter from Miss Pinkerton, the school’s headmistress, which was full of praise for Amelia’s educational achievements and the sweetness of her nature.

      Amelia’s companion, Miss Rebecca Sharp, had no letter from Miss Pinkerton, and was not at all sad to leave school. Indeed, she was delighted.

      ‘I hate the place,’ she said. ‘I never want to see it again! I wish it were at the bottom of the river, with Miss Pinkerton too.’

      Amelia was shocked. ‘Oh, Rebecca!’ she cried. ‘How can you have such wicked thoughts?’

      As you will guess, Rebecca was not a kind or forgiving person. She said that the world treated her very badly – though it was quite possible that she deserved the treatment she got.

      Her father was an artist, who had given drawing lessons to the young ladies at Miss Pinkerton’s school. He was a clever man and a pleasant companion, but was always in debt and had too great a fondness for the bottle. When he was drunk, he used to beat his wife and daughter. He had married a French dancer, who had taught her daughter to speak perfect French. She had died young, leaving Rebecca to her father’s care.

      And when Rebecca was seventeen, her father died. On his deathbed he wrote to Miss Pinkerton, begging her to look after his orphan daughter. So Miss Pinkerton employed Rebecca to speak French to the young ladies. In return, Rebecca lived in the school, was paid a few pounds a year, and was allowed to attend classes when she was free.

      Rebecca, or Becky, as she was often called, was small and thin, with a pale face and light red hair. She usually kept her head down, but when she looked up, her green eyes were large and attractive, especially to men. Next to the tall, healthy young ladies