The Book of Snobs

The Book of Snobs by William Makepeace Thackeray is a satirical study of social pretension, class anxiety, vanity, and the small hypocrisies that shape polite life. Through sketches rather than a single plot, Thackeray examines how people flatter rank, imitate manners, worship status, and measure themselves against imagined superiors.

Readers interested in Victorian satire, social criticism, and comic moral observation will find The Book of Snobs sharp and still recognizable. Thackeray's humor can be playful, but his target is serious: a society that turns insecurity into performance and deference into habit. The book remains useful because snobbery is not treated as a rare vice; it appears as a common social reflex, funny because it is so familiar.