Thackeray's Vanity Fair opens as two girls are leaving school together: the gentle, innocent Amelia and the sharp-witted, impoverished Becky. Their fortunes are intertwined over the next twenty years, through the Battle of Waterloo and after, in a novel full of lively and perceptively drawn characters.Though regarded as one of the great works of English literature, Vanity Fair is also extremely long and discursive. This abridgement shortens the book to around 60% of the original length, making it more accessible to today's readers.