Edith Wharton

Nina Bawden

First published in 1905, THE HOUSE OF MIRTH shocked the New York society it so deftly chronicles, portraying the moral, social and economic restraints on a woman who dared to claim the privileges of marriage without assuming the responsibilities. Lily Bart, beautiful, witty and sophisticated, is accepted by 'old money' and courted by the growing tribe of nouveaux riches. But as she nears thirty, her foothold becomes precarious; a poor girl with expensive tastes, she needs a husband to preserve her social standing and to maintain her in the luxury she has come to expect. Whilst many have sought her, something - fastidiousness or integrity- prevents her from making a 'suitable' match.

The House of Mirth

From the great writer of turn-of-the century New York, two devastating portraits of lonely widowhood and an unconventional marriage.

The Reckoning

One might not expect a woman of Edith Wharton's literary stature to be a believer of ghost stories, much less be frightened by them, but as she admits in her postscript to this spine-tingling collection, "...till I was twenty-seven or -eight, I could not sleep in the room with a book containing a ghost story." Once her fear was overcome, however, she took to writing tales of the supernatural for publication in the magazines of the day. These eleven finely wrought pieces showcase her mastery of the traditional New England ghost story and her fascination with spirits, hauntings, and other supernatural phenomena. Called "flawlessly eerie" by Ms. magazine, this collection includes "Pomegranate Seed," "The Eyes," "All Souls'," "The Looking Glass," and "The Triumph of Night."

The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton

As Newland Archer prepares to marry docile May Welland, the return of the mysterious Countess Olenska turns his life upside down

The Age of Innocence

Collects "Ethan Frome" and four short stories: "The Touchstone," "The Last Asset," "Xingu," and "The Other Two"

Ethan Frome and Other Short Fiction

An elegantly hair-raising collection of Edith Wharton's ghost stories, selected and with a preface written by the author herself. No history of the American uncanny tale would be complete without mention of Edith Wharton, yet many of Wharton’s most dedicated admirers are unaware that she was a master of the form. In fact, one of Wharton’s final literary acts was assembling Ghosts, a personal selection of her most chilling stories, written between 1902 and 1937. In “The Lady’s Maid’s Bell,” the earliest tale included here, a servant’s dedication to her mistress continues from beyond the grave, and in “All Souls,” the last story Wharton wrote, an elderly woman treads the permeable line between life and the hereafter. In all her writing, Wharton’s great gift was to mercilessly illuminate the motives of men and women, and her ghost stories never stray far from the preoccupations of the living, using the supernatural to investigate such worldly matters as violence within marriage, the horrors of aging, the rot at the root of new fortunes, the darkness that stares back from the abyss of one’s own soul. These are stories to “send a cold shiver down one’s spine,” not to terrify, and as Wharton explains in her preface, her goal in writing them was to counter “the hard grind of modern speeding-up” by preserving that ineffable space of “silence and continuity,” which is not merely the prerogative of humanity but—“in the fun of the shudder”—its delight. Contents All Souls’ The Eyes Afterward The Lady’s Maid’s Bell Kerfol The Triumph of Night Miss Mary Pask Bewitched Mr. Jones Pomegranate Seed A Bottle of Perrier

Ghosts

Five American girls, denied access to 1870s New York society due to the newness of their wealth, go to England to marry into the cash-hungry aristocracy

A Novel

The Buccaneers

Four novellas by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Age of Innocence respectively take place in New York during the 1840s, 1850s, 1860s, and 1870s, revealing the codes and customs that ruled society of the time. Reprint.

Four Novellas

Old New York

Discusses approaches to writing a short story or novel, and stresses the importance of character and situation

The Writing of Fiction

In the first novel to establish the reputation of this Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Wharton introduces Lily Bart, a poor relation of a wealthy woman who is hopelessly addicted to the pleasures of the moneyed world of luxury and grace. Ironically, it is her delicacy of taste and moral sensibility that render her unfit for survival in this world. Anna Quindlen writes a new Introduction.

Edith Wharton, the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize, vividly reflects on her public and private life in this stunning memoir. With richness and delicacy, it describes the sophisticated New York society in which Wharton spent her youth, and chronicles her travels throughout Europe and her literary success as an adult. Beautifully depicted are her friendships with many of the most celebrated artists and writers of her day, including her close friend Henry James. In his introduction to this edition, Louis Auchincloss calls the writing in A Backward Glance “as firm and crisp and lucid as in the best of her novels.” It is a memoir that will charm and fascinate all readers of Wharton’s fiction.

An Autobiography

A Backward Glance

A Idade da Inocência

Collects "Ethan Frome" and four short stories: "The Pretext," "Afterword," "The Legend," and "Xingu."

And Selected Stories

Ethan Frome

L'età dell'innocenza

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 Reef

The New York stories of Edith Wharton

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.

A Son at the Front

Wharton's acclaimed portrayals of life, love, and marriage among New York's wealthy society in the early years of this century depict with subtle irony the cruelties of social conventions and the contradictions between monetary values and moral values. These three novels are the best representations of Wharton's intuitive insight.

Three Novels of Old New York

The extended family of Mrs. Manford is determined to escape the pain, boredom and emptiness of life through whatever form of "twilight sleep" they can devise or procure.

Edith Wharton

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