Book of Snobs

Thackeray turns his gimlet eye upon the great British disease in this gleefully vicious satire: the worship of money, birth, and status over actual merit. Posing as a solemn sociologist, he dissects the snob with the delighted precision of a naturalist pinning butterflies to a board. Every chapter is a new species of absurdity: the man who mentions his grandfather's title in every sentence, the writer who reviews only his friends, the lady whose dinner invitations depend on your connections rather than your charm. The comedy comes from Thackeray's perfect prose - so elegant, so civilized, while he's gutting the pretensions of the very readers holding his book. This isn't angry satire; it's worse. It's amused. Because the snob, Thackeray knows, is never self-aware. One reads this with the uncomfortable recognition that we've all, at some point, been the fool in the looking glass.