Edith Wharton
3) Ethan Frome
A marked departure from Edith Wharton’s usual ironic contemplation of the fashionable New York society to which she belonged, Ethan Frome is a sharply etched portrait of the simple inhabitants of a nineteenth-century New England village. The protagonist, Ethan Frome, is a man tormented by a passionate love for his ailing...
4) Summer
Summer is the story of Charity Royall, a child of mountain moonshiners adopted by a family in a poor New England town, who has a passionate love affair with Lucius Harney, an educated man from the city. Wharton broke...
Ambitious and wholeheartedly materialistic, Undine Spragg is a beautiful heiress who sees men as a means to an end. New York millionaires and French aristocrats fall at her feet, but each conquest is merely a stepping-stone in Undine’s quest...
The story of a young man who scorns the love of a tortured novelist, only to have her words come back to haunt him from the dead, The Touchstone shows off the skills Wharton became famous for in novels such as Ethan Frome and House of Mirth, particularly her piercing and delicious talent for satiric observation. But...
Though best known for having written novels such as The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth, American author Edith Wharton was also a master of the short story format. Regarded by many critics as her most accomplished collection of short tales, Crucial Instances brings together seven gripping and nuanced stories of the American upper glass in the Gilded Age.
9) Sanctuary
In novels like The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton demonstrated a remarkable talent for exposing the dark underbelly of American high society. In Sanctuary, the tale of doomed marriage propped up by the protagonist's altruism, Wharton further explores the question of whether it is our nature or our upbringing that determines one's character and moral fiber.
11) Bunner Sisters
The story is set in New York City and focuses on two sisters, Anna and Evelina Bunner, who run a small shop selling trinkets and knick-knacks. The sisters live a simple and contented life until the arrival of a mysterious young man named Mr. Haffen turns their world upside down. The sisters become embroiled in a series of events that challenge their assumptions about love, loyalty, and the true nature of happiness. The "Bunner Sisters" is a poignant
...In her own lifetime, Edith Wharton's talents were often pigeonholed and downplayed as appealing to only a small audience of upper-crust society doyennes. Today, however, critics regard her as one of the most important writers of the early twentieth century, rivaling even luminaries such as Henry James in literary significance. In this novel, the author of such masterworks as The Age of Innocence takes aim at issues of religious dogmatism
...13) The Reef
Though best remembered for her novels The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton's 1912 novel The Reef ranks among her most critically acclaimed works. The book offers a piercingly insightful look into a complicated family dynamic that stems from the intertwined relationships of several generations of star-crossed lovers.
From the author that penned beloved literary classics such as The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth comes The Glimpses of the Moon, the surprisingly funny tale of an unlikely romance that arises between newlyweds on an extended honeymoon who have married for convenience, rather than for love.
15) Edith Wharton
"Mrs. Ballinger is one of the ladies who pursue Culture in bands, as though it were dangerous to meet alone..." - From Xingu by Edith Wharton
Selected Shorts has toured to The Mount, the stately and elegant home of the great American writer Edith Wharton, for the last several summers, presenting Broadway and Hollywood actors reading stories by Wharton and other writers. Selected Shorts now presents a collection of four of Edith Wharton's short
...