The Reef (Oxford World's Classics) - Softcover

Wharton, Edith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0192823191 ISBN 13: 9780192823199

Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks, 1998

Synopsis

When "The Reef" appeared in 1912, reviewers found Edith Wharton's story of American expatriates in France sordid and even shocking; but Henry James considered it unequivocally her finest novel. Obliquely but intensely autobiographical, "The Reef" explores Wharton's ambivalent sense of both her newly adopted country and her unexpectedly awakened sexuality. The story focuses on George Darrow, an American diplomat in love with the recently widowed Anna Leath. On his way from London to visit her in France, Darrow finds himself accompanying Sophy Viner, a young American he has known in the past, on the way to Paris. The prologue to the novel is a novella in itself, a minutely rendered anatomy of social ambiguity, and one of Wharton's greatest achievements. The implications of those ten days in Paris inform the remainder of the novel, as Darrow's, Anna's and Sophy's lives become increasingly and intricately interdependent.

About this title

Review

A complex, subtle and moving story of the ways in which people torment one another and the awful power of retrospective jealousy (PENELOPE LIVELY)

About the Author

Edith Wharton (1862-1937), American novelist and short-story writer, was born in New York City. Strongly influenced by Henry James, she is best known for her subtle and su-perbly crafted studies of the tragedies and ironies in the lives of members of middle-class and artistocratic New York soci-ety in the the nineteenth century. She was educated in New York and Europe, and married Edward Wharton, a Boston banker, in 1885. When her husband became mentally ill, she cared for him until 1913, when she settled permanently in France and divorced him. Among her best and most characteristic works are The House of Mirth (1905) and The Age of Innocence (1920), for which she received a Pultizer prize.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0192823191
• ISBN 13: 9780192823199
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 322
• Editor: Orgel Stephen