1849 Vanity Fair

Description

First Edition, Illustrated, Leather Binding, Rebound

A later 1849 issue of the first edition, with 'Mr. Pitt' as opposed to 'Sir Pitt' on page 453. This was not changed until the second edition. Without the suppressed woodcut of the Marquis de Steyne on page 336.

With both engraved and letterpress title page dated 1849, whereas the first issue of the first edition is dated 1848.

Thackeray's novel follows the entangled adventures of two school friends, the gentle and trusting Amelia Sedley and the calculating Becky Sharp, as they come of age during the Napoleonic War. Thackeray displays an interest in deconstructing his era's conventions regarding heroism, with the work sometimes considered the foundation of the Victorian domestic novel.

Illustrated with an engraved frontispiece and title page, thirty-eight further plates, and numerous vignette illustrations, all the work of the author himself. Collated, complete.

With a preliminary advertisement leaf, and with a sixteen page publisher's advertisement leaf to the rear dated May, 1861.

Rebound in full morocco, with endpapers renewed.

A lovely copy of Thackeray's novel.