Vanity Fair

In the nineteenth century, Charles Dickens was probably the King of Literary London, but other writers were his arch-rivals. One of Dickens' contemporaries, William Makepeace Thackeray, was anxious to outdo Dickens, and in his drive, he crafted a thundering account of British life. Thackeray created a novel about a beautiful heroine and titled the book Vanity Fair. On the one hand, Dickens was a writer with a broad reach and a great heart, but Thackeray was colder and crueler in his approach.

Vanity Fair is essentially the narrative of Becky Sharp, who exploits her beauty and charm to seduce men and amass as much wealth as she can. It's a parody of British society that exposes the hypocrisies of the upper classes.

Link to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5797.V