This book conveys Thackeray's development as a novelist, lecturer, familiar essayist, and shaper of cultural awareness in writing "Vanity Fair," where he had so powerfully articulated the comical and absurd system of forces defining the human existence that he and his readers shared. Examining the connections among Thackeray's varied works and activities, Harden reveals the broadening imaginative growth and deepening understanding of a supremely insightful perceiver and critic of human life.