Edith Wharton

Newland Archer, a young lawyer in upper-crust 1870's New York, becomes a victim of social expectations and restrictions when he becomes infatuated with his docile fiancee's nonconformist cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska.

"Ethan Frome is a 1911 book by American author Edith Wharton, Perhaps the best-known and most popular novel and widely considered her masterpiece. It is set in the fictitious town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. The novel tells of Frome, his ailing wife Zeena and her companion Mattie Silver, superbly delineating the characters of each as they are drawn relentlessly into a deep-rooted domestic struggle. Wharton explores psychological dead-lock:frustration,...

Undine Spragg is a beautiful and ambitious, yet vain and socially dense young woman with dreams of marrying a rich man. Hoping for a life of prominence and luxury, Undine convinces her family to relocate to New York. The Spragg family, who have earned their modest wealth from shady practices, are happy to accommodate Undine's request. When Undine meets Ralph Marvell, an aspiring poet from a family of old New York high society, she is determined to...

Edith Wharton's A Son at the Front (1923) is a stirring rumination of family, art, and the shortcomings of possession. The story, which is set on the eve of the First World War reflects the author's own experience living in France when the "Great War" broke out. The delineation of Wartime Paris is one of great power and evocation, yet it is the immensely personal father-son relationship that is at the heart of this tragic novel. The novel begins in...

The extended family of Mrs. Manford is determined to escape the pain, boredom and emptiness of life through whatever form of "twilight sleep" they can devise or procure.

"The Fruit of the Tree," sheds light on a highly controversial topic: labor conditions and factory reform. This, in combination with a love story and the ethical debate over euthanasia, made for mixed, positive reviews upon its publication. Conflicts abound in this turn-of-the century tale of love, ethical dilemma and class division.

One might not expect a woman of Edith Wharton's literary stature to be a believer of ghost stories, much less be frightened by them, but as she admits in her postscript to this spine-tingling collection, "till I was 27 or 28, I could not sleep in the room with a book containing a ghost story." Once her fear was overcome, however, she took to writing tales of the supernatural for publication in the magazines of the day. These 11 finely wrought pieces...

A collection of five stories written by author Edith Wharton, including "Ethan Frome," which follows a poor farmer in nineteenth-century Starkfield, Massachusetts, as he sets off a devastating chain of events over his love for Mattie, cousin of his sickly, demanding wife.

Twenty-one-year-old Lewis Raycie about to embark on a Grand Tour, is advised by his father to seek out works of art for a gallery with their family name. However, when Lewis returns, the paintings he has selected are not what his father expected. Art Fiction is a literary genre in which art is not solely an object, but is a reflection of what is human in all of us. Other examples are: Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier Glimpses of Gauguin...

Francophile Edith Wharton is buried in Versailles. One of the few foreign front-line correspondents in France during World War I, she penned this collection of articles to orient American soldiers headed to the country. Articles such as "First Impressions," "Intellectual Honesty," "Taste," "Continuity," and "The New Frenchwoman" reveal the author's love of her adopted land.