Publishing History
Like many novels of the time, Vanity Fair was published as a serial before being sold in book form; it was printed in 20 monthly parts between January 1847 and July 1848. (As was standard practice, the last part was a "double number" containing parts 19 and 20.)
No. 1 – Jan 1847 Ch. 1 – 4
No. 2 – Feb 1847 Ch. 5 – 7
No. 3 – Mar 1847 Ch. 8 – 11
No. 4 – Apr 1847 Ch. 12 – 14
No. 5 – May 1847 Ch. 15 – 18
No. 6 – Jun 1847 Ch. 19 – 22
No. 7 – Jul 1847 Ch. 23 – 25
No. 8 – Aug 1847 Ch. 26 – 29
No. 9 – Sep 1847 Ch. 30 – 32
No. 10 – Oct 1847 Ch. 33 – 35
No. 11 – Nov 1847 Ch. 36 – 38
No. 12 – Dec 1847 Ch. 39 – 42
No. 13 – Jan 1848 Ch. 43 – 46
No. 14 – Feb 1848 Ch. 47 – 50
No. 15 – Mar 1848 Ch. 51 – 53
No. 16 – Apr 1848 Ch. 54 – 56
No. 17 – May 1848 Ch. 57 – 60
No. 18 – Jun 1848 Ch. 61 – 63
No. 19/20 – Jul 1848 Ch. 64 – 67
The parts resembled pamphlets, and contained the text of several chapters between outer pages of steel-plate engravings and advertising. Woodcut engravings, which could be set along with normal moveable type, appeared within the text. The same engraved illustration appeared on the canary-yellow cover of each monthly part; this colour became Thackeray's signature (as a light blue-green was Dickens'), allowing passers-by to notice a new Thackeray number in a bookstall from a distance. Vanity Fair was the first work that Thackeray published under his own name, and was extremely well received at the time. The original monthly numbers and later bound version featured Thackeray's own illustrations, which at times provided plot hints or symbolically freighted images (a major character shown as a man-eating mermaid, for instance) to which the text does not explicitly refer. Most modern editions either do not reproduce all the illustrations, or reproduce them so badly that much detail is lost.
Thackeray meant the book to be not only entertaining but also instructive, an intention demonstrated through the book's narration and through Thackeray's private correspondence. The novel is considered a classic of English literature, though some critics claim that it has structural problems; Thackeray sometimes lost track of the huge scope of his work, mixing up characters' names and minor plot details. The number of allusions and references it contains can make it difficult for modern readers to follow.
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