When it was written over one hundred years ago, Thackeray described Vanity Fair as "a novel without a hero/' If it did lack a central protagonist, his great work more than compensated for this deliberate omission with a gallery of memorable characters now known and beloved by readers of every shade of taste and opinion. To be able to issue Vanity Fair, with Thackeray's own pen and pencil sketches, in a single volume of 784 pages, complete and unabridged, fulfills the first aim of the Modern Library: to make available the greatest book treasures of the past and present in a convenient and inexpensive form.

Also in the Modern Library: William M. Thackeray's Henry Esmond, M.L. No. 80.