This edition contains a novella - A Shabby Genteel Story - and a novel - Philip. Twenty years divide the two, with Philip being Thackeray's last completed novel, and the Shabby Genteel Story being one of his first ventures into publication. A Shabby Genteel Story is sharp and cynical, Philip much more discursive, with a happy ending produced almost literally by a deus ex machina. Thackeray's villains and flawed characters pulse with life (how much I looked forward to the disingenuous letters from New York from the disgraced, but ever buoyant, Dr Firmin); his plots move in circles on an increasingly narrow path; his diversions and extravagances amuse and portray Victorian life vividly in technicolour. His virtuous leading ladies and manly heroes do not fare so well in retrospect, appearing insipid and cloth headed respectively. While Philip and his little wife Charlotte, and his Little Sister, have both light and shade in their characters, the shade is unsubtle, and the characters fail to live and breathe. But there are enough riches elsewhere to make this an irritation, rather than anything worse...