Edith Wharton

The House of Mirth (1905), a novel by Edith Wharton (1862-1937), tells the story of Lily Bart, a well-born but impoverished woman belonging to New York City's high society around the turn of the last century. Wharton creates a portrait of a stunning beauty who, though raised and educated to marry well both socially and economically, is reaching her 29th year, an age when her youthful blush is drawing to a close and her marital prospects are becoming ever more limited. The House of Mirth traces Lily's slow two-year social descent from privilege to a tragically lonely existence on the margins of society.

Can't get enough of the Gilded Age fast talkers, d butantes, and social climbers who populate Edith Wharton's exquisitely wrought novels? Fans of The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence will love The Custom of the Country, which details country girl Undine Spragg's attempt to take a bite out of Big Apple high society.

From the author that penned beloved literary classics such as The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth comes The Glimpses of the Moon, the surprisingly funny tale of an unlikely romance that arises between newlyweds on an extended honeymoon who have married for convenience, rather than for love.

In novels like The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton demonstrated a remarkable talent for exposing the dark underbelly of American high society. In Sanctuary, the tale of doomed marriage propped up by the protagonist's altruism, Wharton further explores the question of whether it is our nature or our upbringing that determines one's character and moral fiber.

The best of ghost stories from Edith Wharton, including: The Bolted Door, His Father's Son, The Daunt Diana, The Debt, Full Circle, The Legend, The Eyes, The Blond Beast, Afterward, The Letters.

The Descent of Man; The Other Two; Expiation; The Lady's Maid's Bell; The Mission of Jane; The Reckoning; The Letter; The Dilettante; The Quicksand; A Venetian Night's Entertainment

The novel is framed by the literary device of an extended flashback. The prologue, which is neither named as such nor numbered, opens with an unnamed male narrator spending a winter in Starkfield while in the area on business. He spots a limping, quiet man around the village, who is somehow compelling in his demeanor and carriage. This is Ethan Frome, who is a local fixture of the community, having been a lifelong resident.

American novelist and designer Edith Wharton traveled to Morocco after the end of World War I. Morocco is her account of her time there as the guest of General Hubert Lyautey. Her account praises Lyautey and his wife and also the French administration of the country.

The Fruit of the Tree is one of Edith Wharton's few novels to deal directly with issues such as euthanasia, the problems of labor and industrial conditions, and professions for women, as well as Wharton's more customary themes such as divorce. Published in 1907, it received positive but mixed reviews, and more recently critics have attempted to explain its uneven structure, which combines an industrial plot (Amherst's attempts to reform the mills), an ethical plot (the question of euthanasia) and the more conventional romance plot (Justine, Bessy, and Amherst).

"Bunner Sisters," written in 1892 but not published until 1916 in Xingu and Other Stories, takes place in a shabby neighborhood in New York City. The two Bunner sisters, Ann Eliza the elder, and Evelina the younger, keep a small shop selling artificial flowers and small handsewn articles to Stuyvesant Square's "female population."

George Darrow, an American diplomat residing in London, has remained in contact with his former love, Anna Leath, who previously married another man. Now widowed, she resumes contact with Darrow. Darrow desires to continue the relationship he had with Anna but remains concerned about her commitment to the relationship. The novel begins with Darrow preparing to join Anna in France when he receives a telegram ordering him to wait "til thirtieth" because of an "unexpected obstacle" - one of many such delays Anna has ordered.

Edith Wharton's "Madame de Treymes" is a remarkable example of the form. It is the story of the tactical defeat but moral victory of an honest and upstanding American in his struggle to win a wife from a tightly united but feudally minded French aristocratic family. He loses, but they cheat. . . .

In the title story, a refined ladies' lunch club and its members' pretensions to cultural understanding, come under Edith Wharton's keen satiric eye.

Life at Pontesordo was in truth not very pleasant for an ardent and sensitive little boy of nine, whose remote connection with the reigning line of Pianura did not preserve him from wearing torn clothes and eating black bread and beans out of an earthen bowl on the kitchen doorstep.

Though best remembered for her novels The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton's 1912 novel The Reef ranks among her most critically acclaimed works. The book offers a piercingly insightful look into a complicated family dynamic that stems from the intertwined relationships of several generations of star-crossed lovers.

The House of Mirth is an uncompromising depiction of 19th-century New York society. Lily Bart is a society lady who is unwilling to marry for love, but equally unwilling to marry as society dictates. She sabotages every advantageous opportunity she receives, until her society friends begin to hasten her downfall for their own ends.

In the title story, the "hermit" is a boy who witnessed the murder of his parents and sister. The trauma has shaped his life, but a new neighbor-the "wild woman"-is about to change his outlook. Wharton's 1908 collection also includes "The Last Asset," "In Trust," "The Pretext," "The Verdict," "The Pot-Boiler," and "The Best Man."

Brimming with romance and important social questions, Edith Wharton's novel The Fruit of the Tree offers something for everyone. The story expertly weaves themes of workers' rights, medical ethics, and end-of-life care into the framework of a conventional - but pulse-pounding - romantic entanglement.

The Age of Innocence is an intimate portrayal of East Coast American society in the 19th century--and the human lives that came into conflict with it. Newland Archer is heir to one of New York City's first families, and his bride-to-be is everything he ever hoped. Then his fiancee's older cousin leaves her European husband and appears in New York, where she refuses to conform to society and her family's wishes. Archer is at first angered and then intrigued by her. Their passionate relationship challenges everything he believes and ultimately suffers at the hands of society and family obligation. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize; Wharton was the first woman to win it.