The House of Mirth (Wordsworth Classics) - Softcover

Wharton, Edith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1840224193 ISBN 13: 9781840224191

Publisher: Wordsworth Editions, 2002

Synopsis

Introduction and Notes by Janet Beer, Manchester Metropolitan University.

The House of Mirth tells the story of Lily Bart, aged 29, beautiful, impoverished and in need of a rich husband to safeguard her place in the social elite, and to support her expensive habits - her clothes, her charities and her gambling. Unwilling to marry without both love and money, Lily becomes vulnerable to the kind of gossip and slander which attach to a girl who has been on the marriage market for too long.

Wharton charts the course of Lily's life, providing, along the way, a wider picture of a society in transition, a rapidly changing New York where the old certainties of manners, morals and family have disappeared and the individual has become an expendable commodity.

The House of Mirth was published in October 1905 to widespread critical acclaim. It became an instant bestseller and is regarded today as one of Edith Wharton s most accomplished and compelling social satires.

About this title

Review:

With an introduction by Elizabeth Hardwick,
Contemporary Reviews, and Letters
Between Edith Wharton and Her Publisher
" A frivolous society can acquire dramatic significance only through what its frivolity destroys."--Edith Wharton
Lily Bart knows that she must marry--her expensive tastes and mounting debts demand it--and, at twenty-nine, she has every artful wile at her disposal to secure that end. But attached as she is to the social world of her wealthy suitors, something in her rebels against the insipid men whom circumstances compel her to charm.
"Why must a girl pay so dearly for her least escape," Lily muses as she contemplates the prospect of being bored all afternoon by Percy Grice, dull but undeniably rich, "on the bare chance that he might ulti-
mately do her the honor of boring her for life?" Lily is distracted from her prey by the arrival of Lawrence Selden, handsome, quick-witted, and penniless. A runaway bestseller on publication in 1905, The House of Mirth is a brilliant romantic novel of manners, the book that established Edith Wharton as one of America's greatest novelists.
" A tragedy of our modern life, in which the relentlessness of what men used to call Fate and esteem, in their ignorance, a power beyond their control, is as vividly set forth as ever it was by Aeschylus or Shakespeare." --The New York Times
Edith Wharton (1862-1937) was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in
1920 for The Age of Innocence. But it was the publication of The House of Mirth in 1905 that marked Wharton's coming-of-age as a writer.

Book Description:

* First published in 1905, THE HOUSE OF MIRTH portrays the moral, social and economic restraints on a woman who dared to claim the privileges of marriage without assuming the responsibilities.

About this edition

• Publisher: Wordsworth Editions
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1840224193
• ISBN 13: 9781840224191
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320