Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

Amazon | Project Gutenberg

Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?

Thackeray's most famous novel, a satire of early 19th-century British society, centering around the machinations of the ambitious and unscrupulous Becky Sharp, a young woman determine to make her way in society by whatever means possible.