The Mother's Recompense (Virago Modern Classics) - Softcover

Wharton, Edith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0860684113 ISBN 13: 9780860684114

Publisher: Virago Press Ltd, 1986

Synopsis

Edith Wharton (1862-1937), born Edith Newbold Jones, was an American novelist, short story writer, and designer. She combined her insider's view of America's privileged classes with a brilliant, natural wit to write humourous and incisive novels and short stories. Wharton was well-acquainted with many of her era's literary and public figures, including Henry James and Theodore Roosevelt. Besides her writing, she was a highly regarded landscape architect, interior designer, and taste-maker of her time. She wrote several influential books, including The Decoration of Houses (1897), her first published work, and Italian Villas and Their Gardens (1904). The Age of Innocence (1920), perhaps her best known work, won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for literature, making her the first woman to win the award. Her other works include: The Greater Inclination (1899), The Touchstone (1900), Sanctuary (1903), The Descent of Man and Other Stories (1904), The House of Mirth (1905), Madame de Treymes (1907), The Fruit of the Tree (1907), The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories (1908), Ethan Frome (1912), In Morocco (1921), and The Glimpses of the Moon (1921).

About this title

From the Back Cover

Opening on the French Riviera among a motley community of American expatriates, The Mother's Recompense tells the story of Kate Clephane and her reluctant return to New York society after being exiled years before for abandoning her husband and infant daughter. Oddly enough, Kate has been summoned back by that same daughter, Anne, now fully grown and intent on marrying Chris Fenno, a war hero, dilettante, and social opportunist. Chris' questionable intentions toward her daughter are, however, the least of Kate's worries since she was once, and still is, deeply in love with him. Kate's moral quandary and the ensuing drama evoke comparison with Oedipus and Hamlet and lead to an ending that startled the mores of the day.

About the Author

Edith Wharton was the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize, for The Age of Innocence. Born in 1862 into one of New York's older and richer families, she was educated in New York and abroad. Her works include Ethan Frome, The House of Mirth, Old New York, The Reef, and Madame de Treymes and Other Stories. As a keen observer and chronicler of society, she is without peer. Edith Wharton died in France in 1937.

Edition details

• Publisher: Virago Press Ltd
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 0860684113
• ISBN 13: 9780860684114
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English