William Makepeace Thackeray has 5 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 5 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.3★ across 17 ratings. The most-rated is Vanity Fair [AudioGo].
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Vanity Fair [AudioGo]
Summary
Exclusively from Audible Set during the time of the Napoleonic Wars, this classic gives a satirical picture of a worldly society. The audiobook revolves around the exploits of the impoverished but beautiful and devious Becky Sharp who craves wealth and a position in society. Calculating and determined to succeed, she charms, deceives and manipulates everyone she meets. A story of early 19th-century English society, it takes its title from the place designated as the centre of human corruption in John Bunyan's 17th-century allegory Pilgrim's Progress. Receiving popular and critical success on first publication, the novel is considered Thackeray's masterpiece, and this satire of society is as relevant now as when it first appeared. In 2003, Vanity Fair was listed at Number 122 on the BBC's The Big Read poll of the UK's best-loved books. Thackeray was born in Calcutta in 1811. After his father's death, he was sent to be educated in England at five years old, while is mother remarried in India. The canings and abuses he received in private boarding schools formed a basis for some of his work as did the culture of Anglo-Indians which also featured prominently. Narrator Biography After training at RADA, John's professional career began in 1964 at the Regent's Park Theatre. Film credits include Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow Up, The Lion in Winter, Man of La Mancha, King David, Antony and Cleopatra, Robocop 2 and The Sparrow. Theatre credits include Bloody Sunday (The Tricycle Theatre), Claudius in Hamlet (National Theatre), Rat in the Skull (Duke of York's Theatre), End Game (Tron Theatre, Glasgow), Shylock in The Merchant of Venice (London Shakespeare Group), Infidelities (The Boulevard Theatre), and Breaking the Code (The Comedy Theatre). Television credits include Tracate Middoth, The Fixer, Spooks, Poirot, Silent Witness, The Holocaust on Trial, Casualty, Princes in the Tower, Gods and Generals, Fight Against Slavery, Ben Hall, I, Claudius, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and Lillie.
Public Domain (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Vanity Fair
Summary
Vanity Fair, with its rich cast of characters, takes place on the snakes-and-ladders board of life. Amelia Sedley, daughter of a wealthy merchant, has a loving mother to supervise her courtship. Becky Sharp, an orphan, has to use her wit, charm, and resourcefulness to escape from her destiny as a governess. This she does ruthlessly, musing: "I think I could become a good woman, if I had £5,000 a year." Thackeray’s story is set at the time of the battle of Waterloo, in which the Sedley fortunes are lost - and Amelia is back to square one - while Becky rises with contemptuous ease. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
Public Domain (P)2013 Naxos AudioBooks
Vanity Fair
Summary
Vanity Fair is a satirical novel of manners which takes place during, and in the decade after, the battle of Waterloo in 1815. The various scenes in the novel range across Europe and England. It was first published in serial form beginning in 1847. The work is by turns witty, scintillating, brutally realistic, tragic, humorous, and always fascinating. The title of the book stems from Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress”, where Vanity is a town along the pilgrim’s route, and which holds an eternal fair of the vanities. It is a place where people are ensnared by worldly things. By Thackeray’s time, Vanity Fair had come to be seen as a playground of the idle rich and their sychophants. As an example of the Victorian novel, there is none finer than this. Although the novel is peopled by dozens of sharply outlined characters, it traces in detail the intertwined lives and careers of six: Rebecca Sharp, Amelia Sedley, George Osborne, Joseph Sedley, William Dobbin, and Rawdon Crawley. Of the six, Becky is the most famous and certainly the most interesting. Impoverished child of an artist and opera singer, Miss Sharp is determined to carve out a place for herself in Vanity Fair. Ambition is her outstanding characteristic. She personifies the merciless social climber who carelessly destroys the lives of others in pursuit of her goal. But in the final analysis, Vanity Fair is the timeless story of people futilely struggling to establish themselves in society…with all the resultant human foibles, deceptions, fears, and triumphs.
Public Domain (P)2018 Audio Connoisseur
The Rose and the Ring
Summary
The Rose and The Ring is a satirical work of fantasy fiction by William Makepeace Thackeray, which was originally published in 1854. It is the tale of a fairy, a king of two kingdoms, their offspring, and an old woman. Set in the fictional countries of Paflagonia and Crim Tartary, it criticizes the attitudes of the British upper class and challenges their ideals of beauty and marriage. The story revolves around the lives and fortunes of four royal cousins, Princesses Angelica and Rosalba, and Princes Bulbo and Giglio. The narrative is filled with humor.
Public Domain (P)2020 Museum Audiobooks
Vanity Fair (AmazonClassics Edition)
Summary
Napoleon has England on edge. For the cunning and conniving Becky Sharp, it’s an opportunity to take advantage of the chaos and improve her lowly station. Her friend Amelia Sedley, a blue-blood pawn, affords Becky entrée into the moneyed class. As the guileless Amelia pines for a rakish soldier, the ruthless Becky climbs upward, setting the stage for a domestic battlefield of greed, ambition, deception, and dizzying reversals of love and fortune. Bracingly unsentimental, and featuring the wiliest woman in literature, William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair is a savagely satiric panorama of English society at war. Revised edition: Previously published as Vanity Fair, this edition of Vanity Fair (AmazonClassics Edition) includes editorial revisions.
Public Domain (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.