Thackeray William Makepeace

Vanity Fair Thackeray William Makepeace

The story is framed as a puppet play and the narrator, despite being an authorial voice, is notoriously unreliable. Late in the narrative, it is revealed that the entire account has been 2nd- or 3rd-hand gossip the writer picked up "years ago" from Lord Tapeworm, British charge d'affaires in one of the minor German states and relative of several of the other aristocrats in the story but none of the main characters: "the famous little Becky puppet," "the Amelia Doll," "the Dobbin Figure," "the Little Boys," and "the Wicked Nobleman, on which no expense has been spared."