Why did William Makepeace Thackeray write "Vanity Fair" Was there something in his life that urged him to write this novel?

While certainly Thackeray had moral and aesthetic reasons for writing the novel, he also had financial ones.  He wrote it as a serial (installments in magazines) to make money.  Although born into the class of a gentleman, he had lost money through investments.  He saw himself as competing against Charles Dickens, who also wrote for serial publications.  However, Thackeray never reached the popularity gained by Dickens, but he certainly was sufficiently successful to be called a genius by his contemporaries and thereby winning back his status as a “gentleman.”