VANITY FAIR: A NOVEL WITHOUT A HERO

London: Bradbury and Evans, 1848. FIRST EDITION IN BOOK FORM, the Earliest Issue. 216 x 139 mm. (8 1/2 x 5 1/2"). xvi, 624 pp. With ad for the forthcoming "Great Hogarty Diamond" at front.
Pleasing polished calf, gilt, by Root & Son (stamp-signed on verso of front free endpaper), covers with French fillet border, raised bands, spine compartments with central fleuron, one red and one green morocco label, turn-ins with cresting rolls and plain rules, blue endpapers, all edges gilt. 40 steel-engraved plates (including engraved title), all with tissue guards, 150 woodcuts, and initials by Thackeray. Van Duzer 231; Grolier "One Hundred" 87. See Day, "History of English Literature 1837 to the Present," pp. 183-84. ◆Vague dampstain to tail edge of rear board, spine less lustrous than the covers, trivial wear to extremities, occasional minor foxing and faint offsetting from illustrations, other insignificant defects, but an excellent copy--clean and fresh internally, in a pleasing binding with nothing approaching a significant imperfection.

One of the most celebrated novels of the 19th century, this work, in Day's words, "was a conscious innovation which discarded the conventional intrigue plot of contemporary novels" in its preoccupation with social criticism. "No previous English novel, not even from Thackeray's master, Fielding, so minutely depicts and anatomizes a whole class of society--the new leisured gentry, a parasitic class made possible by England's tremendous wealth." For Thackeray (1811-63), "this is his most ferocious attack upon a hypocritical society, while later novels demonstrate his progressive accommodation to his milieu." (Day) Our copy appears to have all of the requisite features of the earliest state of the text of the first edition: the woodcut of the "Marquis of Steyne" (later suppressed) appears on page 336, the heading on page 1 of the text is in rustic letters (as if they were pieces of hewn wood), and "Mr. Pitt" (later "Sir Pitt") appears on page 453. "Vanity Fair" is nothing like a rare book; our copy is meant to stand out because of its agreeable combination of condition and price..