Edith Wharton: Novellas and Other Writings (LOA #47) by
Collected in this Library of America volume are no fewer than six of the works of Edith Wharton- novels, novellas, and her renowned autobiography,A Backward Glance. Together they represent nearly a quarter century in the productive life of one of the most accomplished and admired of American writers. Madame de Treymes(1907) is set in fashionable Paris society, where a once free-spirited American woman is trying to extricate herself, with the help of a fellow countryman, from her marriage to an aristocratic Frenchman. Such a village is the scene ofEthan Frome(1911), a tale of marital entrapment even more relentless. Ethan's unhappy marriage and his desperate love for his wife's cousin Mattie drive him to an act of shattering violence. The magnificent coda is a classic of American realistic fiction. Set in the same region of the Berkshires, Wharton calledSummer(1917) "the Hot Ethan." It is the story of a young woman's initiation into the intricate sexual and social mores of a small town-and her revolt against them. Observations of the American scene continue in the four novellas that make upOld New York(1924). They take us from the 1840s of "False Dawn," where a young man is ostracized for his avant garde taste in art, to the 1870s of "New Year's Day," where a domestic scandal unfolds. The poignancies of parenthood are also the theme ofThe Mother's Recompense(1925). Kate Clephane, a divorced woman who has been living in Europe, returns to New York to find her former lover engaged to her daughter-and to face the emotional tangles of this unusual triangle. The fullest portraits of New York are saved forA Backward Glance(1934), one of the most compelling of American autobiographies.Another perspective is offered in "Life and I," an autobiographical fragment that shows a younger Wharton writing with great frankness about her early life. It is published here for the first time. LIBRARY OF AMERICAis an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
Madame de Treymes | Ethan Frome | Summer | Old New York | The Mother’s Recompense | A Backward Glance | “Life and I”
Edith Wharton: Novels (LOA #30) by
The four novels in this Library of America volume show Wharton at the height of her powers as a social observer and critic, examining American and European lives with a vision rich in detail, satire, and tragedy. In all of them her strong and autobiographical impulse is disciplined by her writer's craft and her unfailing regard for her audience. The House of Mirth(1905), Wharton's tenth book and her first novel of contemporary life, was an immediate runaway bestseller, with 140,000 copies in print within three months of publication. The story of young Lily Bart and her tragic sojourn among the upper class of turn-of-the-century New York, it touches on the insidious effects of social convention and upon the sexual and financial aggression to which women of independent spirit were exposed. The Reef(1912) is the story of two couples whose marriage plans are upset by the revelation of a past affair between George Darrow (a mature bachelor) and Sophy Vener, who happens to be the fiancee of his future wife's stepson. Henry James called the novel "a triumph of method," and it shares the rich nuance of his ownThe Golden Bowl. The Custom of the Country(1913) is the amatory saga of Undine Spragg of Apex City-beautiful, spoiled, and ambitious-whose charms conquer New York and European society. Vulgar and voracious, she presides over a series of men, representing the old and new aristocracies of both continents, in a comedy drawn unmistakably from life. The Age of Innocence(1920) is set in the New York of Wharton's youth, when the rules and taboos of her social "tribe" held as-yet unchallenged sway. A quasi-anthropological study of a remembered culture and its curious conventions, it tells the story of the Countess Olenska (formerly Ellen Mingott), refugee from a disastrous European marriage, and Newland Archer, heir to a tradition of respectability and family honor, as they struggle uneasily against their sexual attraction. LIBRARY OF AMERICAis an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
The House of Mirth | The Reef | The Custom of the Country | The Age of Innocence