Vanity Fair, written by the British novelist Thackeray in the 19^th century, is a masterpiece most enduring through time among his works. This novel also brought a great fame to the author. William Makepeace Thackeray, the author, was born in Calcutta, a city of India in 1812. When he was young he loved writing and drawing. He travelled around the Europe without graduating from Cambridge University, paid a visit to Goethe, and learnt drawing in Paris. He began to publish articles since 1833 and for decades he changed his pen name for almost 20 times till he started to use his real name in Vanity Fair. Since then his reputation was widely known. Thackeray held the idea that the mission of art was to disclose the regime class; what’s more, he was esp. good at rearing the masks wore by the aristocrat and bourgeois.
    The story is about the boisterous upper middle class in the 19^th century British, and it shows vividly about an adventuress. The main plot of the novel has two clues: A clue depicts the deceased poor painter's daughter Becky, who had left the Miss Pinkerton’s academy for young ladies and lived with the rich lady Amelia provisionally, during which time attempted to seduce Amelia’s brother to step into up class. After she failed, Becky entered as a governess in Sir Pitt Crowley’s family, where she put to good use of her blandishment, flattering and seducing trick. When Sir Pitt Crowley lost his wife and proposed to her, the woman had already married Pitt’s son secretly. The other describes the pure lady Amelia, who fell in love with a superficial dandy captain George Osborne and married him by fighting against all odds. But her husband was fed up with her soon and went for another woman ——Becky. Amelia refused to marry another man even after his husband’s death until she knew the truth about his husband had done. As for Becky, she had many lovers during her lifetime, when she got old, she received an inheritance from one old lover and began to enthuse on charity.
    The writer describes the picture vividly in reality, and fully presents the cheating, using, betraying, and snobbish and vanity behavior in life. And it is not only in British at that time, it is also in today. These things do exist in our life, life is just life, and almost everybody is pursuing fame and fortune…
    Anyway it is a wonderful book and worth reading.