Edith Wharton: books tagged “Edith Wharton” @ BookFinder.com

ISBN 9781551113364 (1-55111-336-8, 1551113368)

by Edith Wharton, Michael Everett Nowlin

ISBN 1551113368 (1-55111-336-8)
Softcover, Broadview Pr

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Book summary:

Winner of the 1921 Pulitzer Prize, The Age of Innocence is an elegant, masterful portrait of desire and betrayal in old New York. With vivid power, Wharton evokes a time of gaslit streets, formal dances held in the ballrooms of stately brownstones, and society people "who dreaded scandal more than disease." This is Newland Archer's world as he prepares to many the docile May Welland. Then, suddenly, the mysterious, intensely nonconformist Countess Ellen Olenska returns to New York after a long absence, turning Archer's world upside down.

This classic Wharton tale of thwarted love is an exuberantly comic and profoundly moving look at the passions of the human heart, as well as a literary achievement of the highest order. [via]

More editions of The Age of Innocence:

ISBN 9780681005709 (0-681-00570-X, 068100570X)

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Edith Wharton

by Edith Wharton

ISBN 068100570X (0-681-00570-X)
Softcover, Octopus Publishing Group

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Age of Innocence House of Mirth Ethan Frome [via]

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Edith Wharton: ISBN 068100570X (0-681-00570-X)
Softcover, Octopus Publishing Group

Edith Wharton : A Biography

by R. W. B. Lewis

ISBN 0880640200 (0-88064-020-0)
Softcover, Fromm International Publishing Corporation

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More editions of Edith Wharton : A Biography:

Edith Wharton : A Biography: ISBN 0880640200 (0-88064-020-0)
Softcover, Fromm International Publishing Corporation

Ethan Frome

by Edith Wharton

ISBN 1404349391 (1-4043-4939-1)
Softcover, Indypublish.Com

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Book summary:

Ethan Frome is a tale remembered because exactly it speaks to something inside so many of us. It's the tale of an old man, shriveled at the heart -- and how he got to be that way. It's a tale of love conflicted and compounded -- a tale of tragedy and a lifetime of its aftermath.

ETHAN FROME [via]

More editions of Ethan Frome:

ISBN 9780553212556 (0-553-21255-9, 0553212559)

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Ethan Frome and Other Short Fiction

by Edith Wharton

ISBN 0553212559 (0-553-21255-9)
Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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Book summary:

On a bleak New England farm, a taciturn young man has resigned himself to a life of grim endurance. Bound by circumstance to a woman he cannot love, Ethan Frome is haunted by a past of lost possibilities until his wifes orphaned cousin, Mattie Silver, arrives and he is tempted to make one final, desperate effort to escape his fate. In language that is spare, passionate, and enduring, Edith Wharton tells this unforgettable story of two tragic lovers overwhelmed by the unrelenting forces of conscience and necessity.

Included with Ethan Frome are the novella The Touchstone and three short stories, The Last Asset, The Other Two, and Xingu. Together, this collection offers a survey of the extraordinary range and power of one of Americas finest writers. [via]

More editions of Ethan Frome and Other Short Fiction:

Ethan Frome and Other Short Fiction: ISBN 0553212559 (0-553-21255-9)
Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

ISBN 9781404308190 (1-4043-0819-9, 1404308199)

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The House of Mirth

by Edith Wharton

ISBN 1404308199 (1-4043-0819-9)
Softcover, IndyPublish.com

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Book summary:

An impulse of curiosity made him turn out of his direct line to the door, and stroll past her. He knew that if she did not wish to be seen she would contrive to elude him; and it amused him to think of putting her skill to the test. [via]

More editions of The House of Mirth:

ISBN 9781551115672 (1-55111-567-0, 1551115670)

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The House of Mirth

by Janet Beer, Elizabeth Nolan

ISBN 1551115670 (1-55111-567-0)
Softcover, Broadview Pr

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Book summary:

"The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth," warns Ecclesiastes 7:4, and so does the novel by Edith Wharton that takes its title from this call to heed. New York at the turn of the century was a time of opulence and frivolity for those who could afford it. But for those who couldn't and yet wanted desperately to keep up with the whirlwind, like Wharton's charming Lily Bart, it was something else altogether: a gilded cage rather than the Gilded Age.

One of Wharton's earliest descriptions of her heroine, in the library of her bachelor friend and sometime suitor Lawrence Selden, indicates that she appears "as though she were a captured dryad subdued to the conventions of the drawing room." Indeed, herein lies Lily's problem. She has, we're told, "been brought up to be ornamental," and yet her spirit is larger than what this ancillary role requires. By today's standards she would be nothing more than a mild rebel, but in the era into which Wharton drops her unmercifully, this tiny spark of character, combined with numerous assaults by vicious society women and bad luck, ultimately renders Lily persona non grata. Her own ambivalence about her position serves to open the door to disaster: several times she is on the verge of "good" marriage and squanders it at the last moment, unwilling to play by the rules of a society that produces, as she calls them, "poor, miserable, marriageable girls.

Lily's rather violent tumble down the social ladder provides a thumbnail sketch of the general injustices of the upper classes (which, incidentally, Wharton never quite manages to condemn entirely, clearly believing that such life is cruel but without alternative). From her start as a beautiful woman at the height of her powers to her sad finale as a recently fired milliner's assistant addicted to sleeping drugs, Lily Bart is heroic, not least for her final admission of her own role in her downfall. "Once--twice--you gave me the chance to escape from my life and I refused it: refused it because I was a coward," she tells Selden as the book draws to a close. All manner of hideous socialite beasts--some of whose treatment by Wharton, such as the token social-climbing Jew, Simon Rosedale, date the book unfortunately--wander through the novel while Lily plummets. As her tale winds down to nothing more than the remnants of social grace and cold hard cash, it's hard not to agree with Lily's own assessment of herself: "I have tried hard--but life is difficult, and I am a very useless person. I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I was just a screw or a cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else." Nevertheless, it's even harder not to believe that she deserved better, which is why The House of Mirth remains so timely and so vital in spite of its crushing end and its unflattering portrait of what life offers up. --Melanie Rehak [via]

More editions of The House of Mirth:

The House of Mirth: ISBN 1551115670 (1-55111-567-0)
Softcover, Broadview Pr

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