Books by Edith Wharton

Word count 24,820 CD: American English

Compelling, rich and strange, the ghost stories of Edith Wharton, like vintage wine, have matured and grown more potent with the passing years.

Edith Wharton's satiric anatomy of American society in the first decade of the twentieth century both appalled and fascinated its first reviewers. It follows the career of Undine Spragg, as she pursues her schemes and social ambitions in a world of shifting values, where triumph is swiftly followed by disillusion.

'Wharton's dazzling skills as a stylist, creator of character, ironical observer and unveiler of passionate, thwarted emotions have earned her a devoted following' Sunday TimesNewland Archer and May Welland are the perfect couple.

Word count 10,700 CD: American English

Edith Wharton's most famous novel, written immediately after the end of the First World War, is a brilliantly realized anatomy of New York society in the 1870s. The charming Newland Archer is content to live within its constraints until he meets Ellen Olenska, whose arrival threatens his impending marriage as well as his comfortable future.

Novel by Pulitzer prize winning author of THE AGE OF INNOCENCE

Rich and strange, these stories reveal a seductive and little-known aspect of this superb writer.

*With an afterword by Marilyn French*Companion volume to HUDSON RIVER BRACKETED

A powerful study of class, of morality and of love.

Presents a tale about a beautiful social climber, Undine Sprague, who is a monster of selfishness and honestly doesn't know it. She marries well above herself twice and both times fails to recognize her husbands' strengths of character or the weakness of her own, and it is they, not she, who pay the price.

'He seemed a part of the mute melancholy landscape, an incarnation of its frozen woe, with all that was warm and sentient in him fast bound below the surface'Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious and hypochondriac wife, Zeena. But when Zeena's vivacious cousin enters their household as a 'hired girl', Ethan finds himself obsessed with her and with the possibilities for happiness she comes to represent. In one of American fiction's finest and most intense narratives, Edith Wharton moves this ill-starred trio towards their tragic destinies.The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

* A bestseller when it was first published in 1928, THE CHILDREN is a touching, bittersweet novel about a middle-aged man's relationship with a band of unruly children - and of his conflicting feelings for the eldest, a girl on the cusp of womanhood.

The return of the beautiful Countess Olenska into the rigidly conventional society of New York sends reverberations throughout the upper reaches of society. Newland Archer, an eligible young man of the establishment is about to announce his engagement to May Welland, a pretty ing nue, when May's cousin, Countess Olenska, is introduced into their circle. The Countess brings with her an aura of European sophistication and a hint of scandal, having left her husband and claimed her independence. Her sorrowful eyes, her tragic worldliness and her air of unapproachability attract the sensitive Newland and, almost against their will, a passionate bond develops between them. But Archer's life has no place for passion and, with society on the side of May and all she stands for, he finds himself drawn into a bitter conflict between love and duty.

Edith Wharton's novel reworks the eternal triangle of two women and a man in a strikingly original manner. The consequent drama, set in New York during the 1870s, reveals terrifying chasms under the polished surface of upper-class society as the increasingly fraught Archer struggles with conflicting obligations and desires.

The text of Wharton's richly allusive Pulitzer Prize-winning 1921 novel of desire and its implications in Old New York has been rigorously annotated by a prominent Wharton scholar.

* A Virago Modern Classic * These stories - all powerful moral analyses - demonstrate the true professionalism of Edith Wharton.

Edith Wharton's subtle variation on the theme of the eternal triangle features Anna Leath, a rich American widow living in France; and the first love of Anna's youth, George Darrow, who has come back into her life. Hoping to be reunited with George, Anna finds the path of love does not run smooth.

A novel first published in 1913. George Darrow, a young diplomat en route from London to France, is engaged to be married to a respectable widow, but when she asks for time to prepare her children for the marriage he is unsettled, and embarks on an affair that will affect all their lives. From the author of THE AGE OF INNOCENCE.

On a poor farm near Starkfield in western Massachusetts, Ethan Frome struggles to wrest a living from the land, unassisted by his whining and hypochondriacal wife Zeena. When Zeena's young cousin Mattie Silver is left destitute, the only place she can go is Ethan's farm.

This Norton Critical Edition of Edith Wharton's quintessential novel of the Gilded Age reprints the Scribner's magazine text of 1905, including the eight original illustrations.