Chapter 8

Fifth Avenue Theatre playbill for “Becky Sharp.”

A reviewer in the Harvard Monthly wrote in 1901, “Becky Sharp is an admirable play that owes its excellence not solely to the greatness of the original, but to good qualities of its own.”

In the twentieth century, Vanity Fair was adapted in many theatrical productions, at least four silent movies, and numerous film and television versions, including with the most recent, in 2004, which featured Reese Witherspoon as Becky. The only other Thackeray novel to received significant film treatment was The Adventures of Barry Lyndon, adapted in 1975 by Stanley Kubrick, and starring Ryan O’Neill.

TCS 72. Source unknown.