Vanity Fair

Title

A reprint of John Bunyan's Plan of the Road from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City, including Vanity Fair as the major city along the path

The book's title comes from John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress,[a] a Dissenter allegory first published in 1678. In that work, "Vanity Fair" refers to a stop along the pilgrim's route: a never-ending fair held in a town called Vanity, which represents man's sinful attachment to worldly things.[6][7] Thackeray does not mention Bunyan in the novel or in his surviving letters about it,[8] where he describes himself dealing with "living without God in the world",[9] but he did expect the reference to be understood by his audience, as shown in an 1851 Times article likely written by Thackeray himself.[10]

Robert Bell—whose friendship later became so great that he was buried near Thackeray at Kensal Green Cemetery[11]—complained that the novel could have used "more light and air" to make it "more agreeable and healthy". Thackeray rebutted this with Evangelist's words as the pilgrims entered Bunyan's Vanity Fair: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?"[12][13]

From its appearance in Bunyan, "Vanity Fair" or a "vanity-fair" was also in general use for "the world" in a range of connotations from the blandly descriptive to the wearily dismissive to the condemning. By the 18th century, it was generally taken as a playground and, in the first half of the 19th century, more specifically the playground of the idle and undeserving rich. All of these senses appear in Thackeray's work. The name "Vanity Fair" has also been used for at least 5 periodicals.[14]


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