Ethan Frome (Oxford World's Classics) - Softcover

Wharton, Edith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0199538093 ISBN 13: 9780199538096

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2008

Synopsis

`It was not so much his great height that marked him ... it was the careless powerful look that he had, in spite of a lameness checking each step like the jerk of a chain.'

Set against the bleak winter landscape of New England, Ethan Frome tells the story of a poor farmer, lonely and downtrodden, his wife Zeena, and her cousin, the enchanting Mattie Silver. In the playing out of this short novel's powerful and engrossing drama, Edith Wharton constructed her least characteristic and most celebrated book. In its unyielding and shocking pessimism, its bleak demonstration of tragic waste, it is a masterpiece of psychological and emotional realism.

In her introduction the distinguished critic Elaine Showalter discusses the background to the novel's composition and the reasons for its enduring success.
ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

About this title

Review

with each volume having an introduction by an acknowledged expert, and exhaustive notes, the World's Classics are surely the most desirable series and, all-round, the best value for money (Oxford Times)

This love story has an emotional intensity made all the more poignant by the inarticulate reticence of Wharton's characters - a ménage à trois consisting of Frome, his querulous wife and her young girl cousin. With quiet assurance, Wharton conveys passion, malaise and tragedy with memorable impact. (Sophia Sackville-West, Evening Standard (London))

Ethan Frome is one of Edith Wharton's most famous novels and rightly so. It is exquisitely written by an author with remarkable observation and imagination. Ethan Frome is a novel which extinguishes hope and blows away happiness but it is so powerful as an analysis of waste that it is nothing short of a masterpiece. (Madeleine Burton, Herts Advertiser)

Book Description

Cambridge Literature is a series of literary texts edited for study by students 14-18 years old in English-speaking classrooms.

Edition details

• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0199538093
• ISBN 13: 9780199538096
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 160
• Editor: Showalter Elaine