Books like Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray reads as witty, immersive. These 12 books share its genome — matched by how they actually read, not just their shelf label.

The Way We Live Now

Anthony Trollope · 1875

Shares the collapse + comic thread

80% genome match

Nicholas Nickleby

Charles Dickens · 1839

Shares the collapse + vornate thread

79% genome match

Middlemarch

George Eliot · 1871

Shares the collapse + ambition thread

83% genome match

Dead Souls

Nikolai Gogol · 1842

Shares the ambition + comic thread

76% genome match

The House of Mirth

Edith Wharton · 1905

Shares the ambition + collapse thread

76% genome match

Père Goriot

Honoré de Balzac · 1835

Shares the ambition + vornate thread

69% genome match

The Canterbury Tales

Geoffrey Chaucer · 1400

Shares the collapse + comic thread

79% genome match

A Confederacy of Dunces

John Kennedy Toole · 1980

Shares the comic + vornate thread

71% genome match

Barchester Towers

Anthony Trollope · 1857

Shares the collapse + comic thread

87% genome match

Main Street

Sinclair Lewis · 1920

Shares the ambition + comic thread

70% genome match

The Rules of Civility

Amor Towles · 2011

Shares the ambition + vornate thread

75% genome match

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Susanna Clarke · 2004

Shares the ambition + vornate thread

69% genome match