Edith Wharton

This tragic love story reveals the destructive effects of wealth and social hypocrisy on Lily Bart, a ravishing beauty. Impoverished but well-born, Lily realizes a secure future depends on her acquiring a wealthy husband. Her downfall begins with a romantic indiscretion, intensifies with an accumulation of gambling debts, and climaxes in a maelstrom of social disasters.

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." Ann Eliza gives Evelina a clock for her birthday. The clock leads the sisters to become involved with Herbert Ramy, owner...

"The wave of recent attention to Edith Wharton as an arbiter of taste and correct usage in the making of domestic interior rooms and to Ogden Codman, Jr., as a revivalist architect of the first rank has made their reputations in those fields seem more secure than ever." "Yet the original text of The Decoration of Houses continues without revision as an authentic classic; it can be argued that this book is the most important of its kind ever published....

This antiquarian book contains Edith Wharton's first serious novel, "The Valley of Decision." Within this text Wharton juxtaposes characters inspired by the anti-religious writings of Voltaire and Rousseau with the orthodox leaders of the day. As in many of Wharton's writings, it becomes evident that violation of societal conventions comes at a great personal cost. This seminal piece of literature would make for a worthy addition to any bookshelf,...

What begins as an ordinary event quickly shifts into the bizarre after the narrator, a wealthy bachelor, meets their friend, Lanvivain, at an old mansion. Thinking about purchasing the property, the narrator and Lanvivain explore the mansion at Kerfol, attracted to the vast and ordinate property. Lanvivain enthusiastically urges the bachelor to buy the property, declaring that it matches his personality exactly. The narrator, however, is unconvinced,...

A new edition of Edith Wharton's war reportage from the First World War. Edith Wharton was one of the first woman writers to be allowed to visit the war zones in France. This resulting collection of 6 essays presents a fascinating and unique perspective on wartime France by one of America's great novelists. Written with Wharton's distinctive literary skills to advocate American intervention in the war, this little-known war text demonstrates that...

Edith Wharton was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928 and 1930. Wharton combined her insider's view of America's privileged classes with a brilliant, natural wit to write humorous, incisive novels of social and psychological insight. She was also well acquainted with many of her era's other literary and public figures, including Theodore Roosevelt....

This early work by Edith Wharton was originally published in 1916 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'The Choice' is a tale about a man who is in the process of losing the family fortune and whose wife and lawyer seem unable to control. Edith Wharton was born in New York City in 1862. Wharton's first poems were published in Scribner's Magazine. In 1891, the same publication printed the first of her many short stories,...

His sabbatical in Europe cut abruptly short by the opening hostilities of the First World War, Charlie Durand, a professor of romance languages, finds himself caught up with a wave of Belgian refugees fleeing to London. Rescued, as it were, by Audrey Rushworth, a flustered yet determined noblewoman, Charlie is hustled off to the English countryside. Only, Charlie isn't really a refugee . . . Playful and insightful, Edith Wharton's "The Refugees" reflects...

Edith Wharton was an American novelist, poet and short story writer whose works display her mastery over the realistic fiction genre. Although she grew up in a world of refined manners and fashionable people, she was also aware of its superficiality, a theme that frequently appeared in her works. Her stories range widely from powerful social commentary to titillating ghost stories that made Wharton extremely popular beyond her living years. This collection...