Vanity Fair

by William Makepeace Thackeray · language: en

Vocabulary level: Intermediate · Flesch–Kincaid grade 10 · 11,842 sentences

Vocabulary level is estimated from word frequency, not an official CEFR classification.

Subjects: British — Europe — Fiction · England — Fiction · Female friendship — Fiction · Married women — Fiction

Words worth knowing: paraphernalia · dependant · compatriot · salver · puffy · noblesse · conciliation · thoroughbred

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray BEFORE THE CURTAIN As the manager of the Performance sits before the curtain on the boards and looks into the Fair, a feeling of profound melancholy comes over him in his survey of the bustling place.

There is a great quantity of eating and drinking, making love and jilting, laughing and the contrary, smoking, cheating, fighting, dancing and fiddling; there are bullies pushing about, bucks ogling the women, knaves picking pockets, policemen on the look-out, quacks (OTHER quacks, plague take them!) bawling in front of their booths, and yokels looking up at the tinselled dancers and poor old rouged tumblers, while the light-fingered folk are operating upon their pockets behind.

Yes, this is VANITY FAIR; not a moral place certainly; nor a merry one, though very noisy.

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