Sundry note...

I'm a Vanity Fair expert at this point. A scholar of Vanity Fair. I could be interviewed on the BBC on this subject.

It's a unique book, I'll say again, because its very reason for being is to describe, in a microcosm way, the environment and phenomena and human nature of 'vanity fair' (i.e. Bunyan's Vanity Fair), which is to say, to describe the world of A Influence and the General Law. So, even though other novels of society by default do this too Thackeray's novel exists to do it exclusively. And he's a writer with the necessary understanding of human nature (and understanding of vanity fair itself) that could pull it off...and did.