The article comprehensively reveals how the artistic model of “life is a fair” functions in realistic and modernist Ukrainian and English literature. In the article under consideration, the model “Life is a Fair” is one variant of the world’s artistic design with a system of values, specific types of characters. The works unite a standard world model, a writer’s reaction to challenges for a person’s transformation to the goods. The study aims to identify the artistic model of “life is a fair” in realistic and modernist Ukrainian and English literary works. The authors aim to reveal the artistic model through the characteristics of the main characters, who live by the principle that everything is sold and bought. This motto is very relevant today. The research methodology grounds on the involvement of comparative-typological, cultural-historical, mythopoetic, and semiotic methods. The integration of the semiotic approach into the methodology of literary criticism has conditioned the functioning of the actual concept of “model” in its terminology. As a result of a comparative study of precedent texts, the specifics of the transformation of the plot motive of the fair into a model of individual-authorial picture of the world in the texts of realism, early and mature modernism were revealed. The research results intend to create a basis for a comparative study of the artistic model of “life as a fair” in the literature of postmodernism and metamodernism. Keywords: Artistic Model “Life is a Fair,” Semiotics, Realism, Modernism, Сomparative Studies, Motive