The Book of Snobs

William Makepeace Thackeray

abr 2010 · 谷月社

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PREFATORY REMARKS
Chapter I. THE SNOB PLAYFULLY DEALT WITH
Chapter II. THE SNOB ROYAL
Chapter III. THE INFLUENCE OF THE ARISTOCRACY ON SNOBS
Chapter IV. THE COURT CIRCULAR, AND ITS INFLUENCE ON SNOBS
Chapter V. WHAT SNOBS ADMIRE
Chapter VI. ON SOME RESPECTABLE SNOBS
Chapter VII. ON SOME RESPECTABLE SNOBS
Chapter VIII. GREAT CITY SNOBS
Chapter IX. ON SOME MILITARY SNOBS
Chapter X. MILITARY SNOBS
Chapter XI. ON CLERICAL SNOBS
Chapter XII. ON CLERICAL SNOBS AND SNOBBISHNESS
Chapter XIII. ON CLERICAL SNOBS
Chapter XIV. ON UNIVERSITY SNOBS
Chapter XV. ON UNIVERSITY SNOBS
Chapter XVI. ON LITERARY SNOBS
Chapter XVII. A LITTLE ABOUT IRISH SNOBS
Chapter XVIII. PARTY-GIVING SNOBS
Chapter XIX. DINING-OUT SNOBS
Chapter XX. DINNER-GIVING SNOBS FURTHER CONSIDERED
Chapter XXI. SOME CONTINENTAL SNOBS
Chapter XXII. CONTINENTAL SNOBBERY CONTINUED
Chapter XXIII. ENGLISH SNOBS ON THE CONTINENT
Chapter XXIV. ON SOME COUNTRY SNOBS
Chapter XXV. A VISIT TO SOME COUNTRY SNOBS
Chapter XXVI. ON SOME COUNTRY SNOBS
Chapter XXVII. A VISIT TO SOME COUNTRY SNOBS
Chapter XXVIII. ON SOME COUNTRY SNOBS
Chapter XXIX. A VISIT TO SOME COUNTRY SNOBS
Chapter XXX. ON SOME COUNTRY SNOBS
Chapter XXXI. A VISIT TO SOME COUNTRY SNOBS
Chapter XXXII. SNOBBIUM GATHERUM
Chapter XXXIII. SNOBS AND MARRIAGE
Chapter XXXIV. SNOBS AND MARRIAGE
Chapter XXXV. SNOBS AND MARRIAGE
Chapter XXXVI. SNOBS AND MARRIAGE
Chapter XXXVII. CLUB SNOBS
Chapter XXXVIII. CLUB SNOBS
Chapter XXXIX. CLUB SNOBS
Chapter XL. CLUB SNOBS
Chapter XLI. CLUB SNOBS
Chapter XLII. CLUB SNOBS
Chapter XLIII. CLUB SNOBS
Chapter XLIV. CLUB SNOBS
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS ON SNOBS

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William Makepeace Thackeray was born in Calcutta, India, where his father was in service to the East India Company. After the death of his father in 1816, he was sent to England to attend school. Upon reaching college age, Thackeray attended Trinity College, Cambridge, but he left before completing his degree. Instead, he devoted his time to traveling and journalism. Generally considered the most effective satirist and humorist of the mid-nineteenth century, Thackeray moved from humorous journalism to successful fiction with a facility that was partially the result of a genial fictional persona and a graceful, relaxed style. At his best, he held up a mirror to Victorian manners and morals, gently satirizing, with a tone of sophisticated acceptance, the inevitable failure of the individual and of society. He took up the popular fictional situation of the young person of talent who must make his way in the world and dramatized it with satiric directness in The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844), with the highest fictional skill and appreciation of complexities inherent within the satiric vision in his masterpiece, Vanity Fair (1847), and with a great subtlety of point of view and background in his one historical novel, Henry Esmond (1852). Vanity Fair, a complex interweaving in a vast historical panorama of a large number of characters, derives its title from John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and attempts to invert for satirical purposes, the traditional Christian image of the City of God. Vanity Fair, the corrupt City of Man, remains Thackeray's most appreciated and widely read novel. It contrasts the lives of two boarding-school friends, Becky Sharp and Amelia Smedley. Constantly attuned to the demands of incidental journalism and his sense of professionalism in his relationship with his public, Thackeray wrote entertaining sketches and children's stories and published his humorous lectures on eighteenth-century life and literature. His own fiction shows the influence of his dedication to such eighteenth-century models as Henry Fielding, particularly in his satire, which accepts human nature rather than condemns it and takes quite seriously the applicability of the true English gentleman as a model for moral behavior. Thackeray requested that no authorized biography of him should ever be written, but members of his family did write about him, and these accounts were subsequently published.