Summer: Edith Wharton (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century) - Softcover

Wharton, Edith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140186794 ISBN 13: 9780140186796

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 1993

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author:

Edith Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones on January 24, 1862, during the American Civil War. Wharton published her first short story in 1891; her first story collection, The Greater Inclination, in 1899; a novella called The Touchstone in 1900; and her first novel, a historical romance called The Valley of Decision, in 1902. The book that made Wharton famous was The House of Mirth, published in 1905. She died in 1937.

From the Inside Flap:

Considered by some to be her finest work, Edith Wharton's "Summer created a sensation when first published in 1917, as it was one of the first novels to deal honestly with a young woman's sexual awakening. "Summer is the story of proud and independent Charity Royall, a child of mountain moonshiners adopted by a family in a poor New England town, who has a passionate love affair with Lucius Harney, an educated young man from the city. Wharton broke the conventions of woman's romantic fiction by making Charity a thoroughly contemporary woman--in touch with her feelings and sexuality, yet kept from love and the larger world she craves by the overwhelming pressures of environment and heredity. Praised for its realism and candor by such writers as Joseph Conrad and Henry James and compared to Flaubert's "Madame Bovary, "Summer was one of Wharton's personal favorites of all her novels and remains as fresh and relevant today as when it was first written.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0140186794
• ISBN 13: 9780140186796
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224
• Editor: Ammons Elizabeth