Edith Wharton

Reproduction of the original: The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton

Reproduction of the original: Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton

Reproduction of the original: Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton

Reproduction of the original: Fighting France by Edith Wharton

Reproduction of the original: Fighting France by Edith Wharton

Reproduction of the original: The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

Set against the bleak winter landscape of New England, Ethan Frome is the story of a poor farmer, lonely and downtrodden, his wife Zeena, and her cousin, the enchanting Mattie Silver. In the playing out of this short novel's powerful and engrossing drama, Edith Wharton constructed her least characteristic and most celebrated book.

Lily Bart, a beautiful but impoverished socialite, is on her way to a house party at Bellomont, the country home of her best friend, Judy Trenor. Her pressing task is to find a husband with the requisite wealth and status to maintain her place in New York society. Judy has arranged for her to meet the wealthy though boring Percy Gryce, a potential suitor. Lily grew up surrounded by elegance and luxury-an atmosphere she cannot live without as she has learned to abhor "dinginess." The loss of her father's wealth and the death of her parents left her an orphan without inheritance or a caring protector. She adapts to life as ward of her straight-laced aunt Julia Peniston from whom she receives an erratic allowance, a fashionable address, and good food, but little succor. Additional challenges to her success in the "marriage market" are her advancing age-she has been on the "marriage market" for ten years, her penchant for gambling at bridge leaving her with debts beyond her means to pay, her efforts to keep up with her wealthy friends, her inner most desire to marry for love as well as money and status, and her longing to be free of the claustrophobic constrictions and routines of upper crust society.

The Age of Innocence won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize. The story is set in upper class New York City in the 1870s. The Age of Innocence centers on an upper class couple's impending marriage, and the introduction of a woman plagued by scandal whose presence threatens their happiness.

Al amable mundo de convenciones sociales estrictas en el que se mueve, aparentemente sin roces ni contrariedades, la alta sociedad de Nueva York de finales del siglo pasado, regresa de Europa la inquietante condesa Olenska. Independiente, osada, diferente, Ellen involucrar muy pronto en su misterio a su joven primo Newland Archer y perturbar sin poder evitarlo el encanto de una vida social que ignora de manera voluntaria su inminente fin. En el fondo de esta extraordinaria historia de una gran pasi n subyace el conflicto entre dos mundos: el de las viejas familias patricias norteamericanas y el de los nuevos ricos, quienes, al terminar la novela, se han apoderado ya de las costumbres y de los esp ritus

The Age of Innocence is the haunting story of the struggle between love and duty in Gilded Age New York told through the eyes of Newland Archer and his betrothed, May Welland. A young lawyer on the rise, Newland Archer needs only a society wife to solidify his position, but finds himself torn after he meets and falls deeply in love with May's disgraced cousin, the Countess Olenska. Edith Wharton's twelfth novel, following classics like The House of Mirth and Ethan Frome, The Age of Innocence was the first novel written by a woman to win the Pulitzer Prize.

Set in and around London, The Reef is a story of complex morality and its intricately woven place in society. This narrative primarily follows George Darrow and Anna Leath, a young gentleman and a widowed lady who plan to marry. Both of them experience doubts about their union, with surprising outcomes. Darrow has a brief liaison with the delicate, generous Sophy Viner, a kind woman of the working class. She later meets Anna's stepson Owen Leath, who wishes to upset social conventions and marry her. When Anna's discovers the intimate history of Darrow and Sophy, she worries about her stepson's affections and feels concerned about the alliance she herself is about to create. Wharton's talent for balancing emotional turmoil and all the social manners of her time is blended into this philosophical work that explores the metaphorical reefs in the hearts of women.

Reproduction of the original: The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

Reproduction of the original: The Choice by Edith Wharton

Perhaps the best-known and most popular of Edith Wharton's novels, Ethan Frome is widely considered her masterpiece. A powerful tale of passion and loss and the wretched consequences thereof Ethan Frome is one of American literature's great tragic love stories.