Sir Charles Sedley, 5th Baronet in 1702. The relationship with Ann Ayscough lasted to the end of Sedley's life. His reputation as a wit and dissolute was partially responsible for the Sedleys of William Makepeace Thackeray's "Vanity Fair". His most famous song, "Phyllis is My Only Joy", is much more widely known now than the author's name. While Sedley chiefly produced light amatory verse and pastoral dialogues in the 1670s, he turned to satirical epigrams in the 1680s and 1690s. His "Epigrams: or, Court Characters" are modelled on the works of Martial. In his epigram "To Nysus", for example, Sedley describes the function of satire
Vanity Fair (novel) by the story's end she is portrayed as vacuous and shallow. Dobbin appears first as loyal and magnanimous, if unaware of his own worth; by the end of the story he is presented as a tragic fool, a prisoner of his own sense of duty who knows he is wasting his gifts on Amelia but is unable to live without her. The novel's increasingly grim outlook can take readers aback, as characters whom the reader at first holds in sympathy are shown to be unworthy of such regard. The work is often compared to the other great historical novel of