Edith Wharton

Opening on the French Riviera among a motley community of American expatriates, "The Mother's Recompense" tells the story of Kate Clephane and her reluctant return to New York society after being exiled years before for abandoning her husband and infant daughter. Oddly enough, Kate has been summoned back by that same daughter, Anne, now fully grown and intent on marrying Chris Fenno, a war hero, dilettante, and social opportunist. Chris's questionable intentions toward her daughter are, however, the least of Kate's worries since she was once, and still is, deeply in love with him. Kate's moral quandary and the ensuing drama evoke comparison with Oedipus and Hamlet and lead to an ending that startled the mores of the day.

Set in the 1920s, The Glimpses of the Moon details the romantic misadventures of Nick Lansing and Susy Branch, a couple with the right connections but not much in the way of funds. They devise a shrewd bargain: they'll marry and spend a year or so sponging off their wealthy friends, honeymooning in their mansions and villas. As Susy explains, We should really, in a way, help more than hamper each other. We both know the ropes so well; what one of us didn't see the other might -- in the way of opportunities, I mean. The other part of the plan states that if either one of them meets someone who can advance them socially, they're each free to dissolve the marriage. How their plan unfolds is a comedy of eros that will charm all fans of Wharton's work.

"I put most of myself into that opus," Edith Wharton said of The Reef, possibly her most autobiographical novel. Published in 1912, it was, Bernard Berenson told Henry Adams, "better than any previous work excepting Ethan Frome." A challenge to the moral climate of the day, The Reef follows the fancies of George Darrow, a young diplomat en route from London to France, intent on proposing to the widowed Anna Leath. Unsettled by Anna's reticence, Darrow drifts into an affair with Sophy Viner, a charmingly naive and impecunious young woman whose relations with Darrow and Anna's family threaten his prospects for success. For its dramatic construction and acute insight into social mores and the multifaceted problem of sexuality, The Reef stands as one of Edith Wharton's most daring works of fiction.

Edith Wharton was at the height of her enormous literary powers when she published The Reef in 1912, and everything about this novel suggests a mastery so complete that it can achieve nothing higher. The plot, which tells of the drastic effects of a casual sexual betrayal on the lives of four Americans in France, is expertly turned, suspenseful, continually compelling. An assured, unhurried dramatic instinct governs the great moments of confrontation and revelation. The central characters, two of whom are innocents and two of whom are burdened by experience and tinged with desperation, are perfectly delineated: their relationships to one another are constructed with a classical feeling for harmony, proportion, and balance. And the entire novel is imbued with a clear-eyed wisdom about both the possibilities and the limitations of human love. Wharton would go on to write splendid books after completing The Reef, but nowhere does she display a finer command of her art than she does here.

Edith Wharton's subtle variation on the theme of the eternal triangle features Anna Leath, a rich American widow living in France; her daughter's delightful governess, Sophy Viner; and the first love of Anna's youth, George Darrow, who has come back into her life. Hoping to be reunited with George, Anna finds the path of love does not run smooth. THE REEF first appeared in 1912 when Edith Wharton was just fifty and at the height of her powers as a writer. It is a beautifully written, highly characteristic and eminently readable novel by a writer whose popularity is increasing by the year.

The return of the beautiful Countess Olenska into the rigidly conventional society of New York sends reverberations throughout the upper reaches of society. Newland Archer, an eligible young man of the establishment is about to announce his engagement to May Welland, a pretty ingénue, when May's cousin, Countess Olenska, is introduced into their circle. The Countess brings with her an aura of European sophistication and a hint of scandal, having left her husband and claimed her independence. Her sorrowful eyes, her tragic worldliness and her air of unapproachability attract the sensitive Newland and, almost against their will, a passionate bond develops between them. But Archer's life has no place for passion and, with society on the side of May and all she stands for, he finds himself drawn into a bitter conflict between love and duty.

Bunner Sisters is a novella written by Edith Wharton, a prominent American novelist and short story writer of the early 20th century. The book was first published in 1916 and has since become a classic of American literature. The story revolves around two sisters, Ann Eliza and Evelina Bunner, who live together in a small apartment in New York City in the late 19th century. The sisters are unmarried and live a quiet, uneventful life, running a small sewing business to make ends meet. However, their lives are disrupted when a handsome young man, named Ramy, enters their shop one day and begins to court Evelina. As the sisters become more involved with Ramy, they are forced to confront the harsh realities of their constrained lives and limited opportunities. Wharton's nuanced portrayal of the sisters' relationship, their day-to-day struggles, and the constraints of their social and economic circumstances, captures the subtle tensions and complexities of life in turn-of-the-century New York. Bunner Sisters is a poignant and insightful work that delves deeply into themes of loneliness, isolation, and the human desire for love and companionship. Wharton's elegant prose and sharp eye for detail create a vivid and atmospheric portrait of a bygone era and a society in transition. This novella is a must-read for fans of American literature and anyone interested in exploring the complexities of human relationships and the social and cultural norms that shape them.

A portrait of 1920s New York society. 7.30 Mental uplift. 7.45 Breakfast. 8 Psychoanalysis. 8.15 See cook . And so begins another day in the elegant, langorous world of the Manford family around whom this ironic and amusing study of a family drama revolves.

THE AGE OF INNOCENCE is Edith Wharton's Pulitzer Prize-winning tale of the manners and morals of New York society in the later 1800s...a world she knew well. Newland Archer is a young attorney, handsome and eligible. Torn between his socially acceptable fiancee and the more earthy attractions of Countess Olenska, Archer is truly on the horns of a dilemma. "The plot is unobvious, delicately developed, with a fine finale that exquisitely satisfies one's sense of fitness, and as always with Edith Wharton, the drama of character is greater than that of event." (Publishers Weekly)

Madame de Treymes, Edith Wharton's first publication after the highly successful The House of Mirth, is a captivating portrait of turn-of-the-century American and French culture. Inspired by Wharton's own entr into Parisian society in 1906 and reminiscent of the works of Henry James, it tells the story of two young innocents abroad: Fanny Frisbee of New York, unhappily married to the dissolute Marquis de Malrive, and John Durham, her childhood friend who arrives in Paris intent on convincing Fanny to divorce her husband and marry him instead. A subtle investigation of the clash of cultures and the role of women in the social hierarchy, Madame de Treymes confirms Edith Wharton's position, as Edmund Wilson wrote, as "an historian of the American society of her time." This Scribner edition of Madame de Treymes also includes three novellas: The Touchstone, Sanctuary, and Bunner Sisters. These short works are rich in the social satire and cunning insight that characterized Wharton's highly acclaimed novels The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth.

Wharton's antiwar masterpiece, now once again available, probes the devastation of World War I on the home front. Interweaving her own experiences of the Great War with themes of parental and filial love, art and self-sacrifice, national loyalties and class privilege, Wharton tells an intimate and captivating story of war behind the lines.

Wharton's antiwar masterpiece, now once again available, probes the devastation of World War I on the home front. Interweaving her own experiences of the Great War with themes of parental and filial love, art and self-sacrifice, national loyalties and class privilege, Wharton tells an intimate and captivating story of war behind the lines.

It is fully annotated for undergraduate readers. "Backgrounds and Contexts" includes a rich selection of materials, some previously unavailable, for the study of contemporary psychological, social, and economic issues, as well as Wharton's private correspondence and writings and biographical accounts of the author. Arranged under two headings, "Criticism" reveals Ethan Frome's impact as both a literary work and a social commentary. "Contemporary Reviews" consists of eight prominent assessments of Ethan Frome, including reviews from the New York Times Book Review, Outlook, The Nation, the Saturday Review, and those penned by Frederic Taber Cooper and Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, among others. "Modern Criticism" (1956-1991) includes seven interpretations of the novella by Lionel Trilling, Elizabeth Ammons, Judith Fryer, Jean Frantz Blackall, Lev Raphael, Candace Waid, and Cynthia Griffin Wolff. A Chronology and a Selected Bibliography are also included.

The four short novels in this collection by the author of The Age of Innocence are set in the New York of the 1840s, '50s, '60s, and '70s, each one revealing the tribal codes and customs that ruled society, portrayed with the keen style that is uniquely Edith Wharton's. Originally published in 1924 and long out of print, these tales are vintage Wharton, dealing boldly with such themes as infidelity, illegitimacy, jealousy, the class system, and the condition of women in society. Included in this remarkable quartet are False Dawn, which concerns the stormy relationship between a domineering father and his son; The Old Maid, the best known of the four, in which a young woman's secret illegitimate child is adopted by her best friend -- with devastating results; The Spark, about a young man's moral rehabilitation, which is sparked by a chance encounter with Walt Whitman; and New Year's Day, an O. Henryesque tale of a married woman suspected of adultery. Old New York is Wharton at her fin

A classic work left unfinished by Edith Wharton has been brought to a successful completion using Wharton's own synopsis, as it chronicles the fortunes of five rich New York girls who travel to England in search of titled husbands. Reprint. NYT.

THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY is probably Edith Wharton's most savage satire on the manners of late nineteenth-century America. It is the story of the exquisitely beautiful but brutally ambitious Undine Spragg who marries her way into the high aristocracy of Europe, abandoning several husbands along the way. This novel, which has scences of comedy and even farce, is a commentary on both certain aspects of feminisim and certain aspects of capitalism in Edith Wharton's time. The novel makes a fitting companion to THE AGE OF INNOCENCE and THE HOUSE OF MIRTH and shows Wharton to be one of the greatest American novelists.

Engaged to the docile May Welland, Newland Archer falls madly in love with the nonconformist Countess Olenska, an older woman with a reputation, but his allegiance to the social code of their set makes their love an impossibility

A black comedy of manners about vast wealth and a woman who can define herself only through the perceptions of others. The beautiful Lily Bart lives among the nouveaux riches of New York City – people whose millions were made in railroads, shipping, land speculation and banking. In this morally and aesthetically bankrupt world, Lily, age twenty-nine, seeks a husband who can satisfy her cravings for endless admiration and all the trappings of wealth. But her quest comes to a scandalous end when she is accused of being the mistress of a wealthy man. Exiled from her familiar world of artificial conventions, Lily finds life impossible.

As part of Bedford/St. Martin's innovative Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism series, this edition of House of Mirth contains carefully seclected critical essays which approach the book from several contemporary critical perspectives.

A tale of forbidden sexual passion and thwarted dreams played out against the lush, summer backdrop of the Massachusetts Berkshires Edith Wharton called Summer her 'hot Ethan'. In their rural settings and their poor, uneducated protagonists, Summer (1916) and Ethan Frome represent a sharp departure from Wharton's familiar depictions of the urban upper class. Charity Royall lives unhappily with her hard-drinking adoptive father in an isolated village, until a visiting architect awakens her sexual passion and the hope for escape. Exploring Charity's relation to her father and her lover, Wharton delves into dark cultural territory: repressed sexuality, small-town prejudice, and, in subtle hints, incest.