Vanity Fair  (Paperback)

The only child of Richmond Thackeray, an East India Company official, William Makepeace Thackeray was born in Calcutta in July 1811. After his father's death, he was sent to England by his mother when he was five. Though he was never keen in academics, Thackeray had the benefits of Charterhouse and Cambridge. He left Cambridge in the year 1830, travelling around the continent, and joined Middle Temple on returning to England to study law. But he soon gave that up.
Thackeray was sluggish and had to drive himself to work. He married Isabella Gethin Shawe in 1836 after which his years of semi-idleness ended. He began writing and turned to journalism to support his family. He produced art criticisms and fictional works for Fraser's Magazine,