Edith Wharton: Four Novels : The House of Mirth/Ethan Frome/the Custom of the Country/the Age of Innocence (Library of America College Editions) - Softcover

Wharton, Edith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 188301137X ISBN 13: 9781883011376

Publisher: Library of America, 1996

Synopsis

Born into an exclusive New York society of elegant manners and rigid codes, Edith Wharton drew on her background to create fiction both trenchantly observant and nostalgic, a vision rich in detail, satire, and tragedy. The House of Mirth traces, through the downfall of independent young Lily Bart, the insidious realities of social convention and sexual and financial aggression among New York's upper classes at the turn of the century. Repressed passions smolder in small-town New England in the classic Ethan Frome, a tale of unhappy marriage and deperate love which erupts in an act of shattering violence. The Custom of the Country is brilliant, ironic comedy, memorable for its portrait of Miss Undine Spragg of Apex City: beautiful, spoiled, and ambitious. The Age of Innocence, set in the New York society of Wharton's youth which "dreaded scandal more than disease," is a profoundly moving tragicomedy of thwarted love told with astonishing insight and objectivity.

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About this title

About the Author:

Edith Wharton (1862-1937) is a central figure in American literature, a masterful chronicler of her age and prolific writer in many modes. Her major works include The House of Mirth (1905), Ethan Frome (1911), The Custom of the Country (1913) and The Age of Innocence (1920), for which she received the Pulitzer Prize, the first awarded to a woman.

About this edition

• Publisher: Library of America
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 188301137X
• ISBN 13: 9781883011376
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 1154