Complete and unabridged, with 13 full-page plates by Thomas Luny, Thomas Whitcombe and William Adolphus Knell. Becky Sharp leaves school by throwing the dictionary out of the carriage window, and proceeds to climb through a society that deserves her. Thackeray subtitled it a novel without a hero and meant it: the good are dull, the charming are ruinous, and Waterloo is fought in a single sentence offstage while the wives wait in Brussels. He drew the original illustrations himself.