Best Selling Books by Edith Wharton

One of the first novels to deal honestly with a woman''s sexual awakening, "Summer" created a sensation upon its 1917 publication. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Ethan Frome" shattered the standards of conventional love stories with candor and realism. Nearly a century later, this tale remains fresh and relevant.

Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious, and hypochondriac wife, Zeenie. But when Zeenieas vivacious cousin enters their household as a ahired girl, a Ethan finds himself obsessed with her and with the possibilities for happiness she comes to represent. In one of American fictionas finest and most intense narratives, Edith Wharton moves this ill-starred trio toward their tragic destinies. Different in both tone and theme from Whartonas other works, Ethan Frome has become perhaps her most enduring and most widely read novel.

The Age of Innocence is a 1920 novel by American author Edith Wharton. It was her twelfth novel, and was initially serialized in 1920 in four parts, in the magazine Pictorial Review. Later that year, it was released as a book by D. Appleton & Company. It won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, making Wharton the first woman to win the prize.[1] Though the committee had initially agreed to give the award to Sinclair Lewis for Main Street, the judges, in rejecting his book on political grounds, "established Wharton as the American ''First Lady of Letters''".[2] The story is set in the 1870s, in upper-class, "Gilded-Age" New York City. Wharton wrote the book in her 50s, after she had established herself as a strong author, with publishers clamoring for her work.

Set in the bleak mansions of England, America, and Normandy, eleven classic tales depict the terrors of persons confronted by unearthly entities.

The House of Mirth (1905), by Edith Wharton, is the story of Lily Bart, a well-born, but penniless woman of the high society of New York City, who was raised and educated to become wife to a rich man, a hothouse flower for conspicuous consumption. As an unmarried woman with gambling debts and an uncertain future, Lily is destroyed by the society that created her. Written in the style of a novel of manners, The House of Mirth was the fourth novel by Edith Wharton (1862-1937), which tells the story of Lily Bart against the background of the high-society of upper class New York City of the 1890s; as a genre novel, The House of Mirth (1905) is an example of American literary naturalism.

"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 toward their tragic destinies. Different in both tone and theme from Wharton''s other works, Ethan Frome has become perhaps her most enduring and most widely read book"

Literary Thoughts edition presents Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton ------ "Ethan Frome" is a novel written in 1911 by Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and short story writer Edith Wharton (1862–1937), telling the story of Ethan Frome, who works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious, and hypochondriac wife, Zeena. All books of the Literary Thoughts edition have been transscribed from original prints and edited for better reading experience. Please visit our homepage literarythoughts.com to see our other publications.

I left my light burning all night, as he had predicted; but it was chiefly because, till near dawn, I was absorbed in my reading. The account of the trial of Anne de Cornault, wife of the lord of Kerfol, was long and closely printed. It was, as my friend had said, probably an almost literal transcription of what took place in the court-room; and the trial lasted nearly a month. Besides, the type of the book was detestable.

The House of Mirth is a 1905 novel by the American author Edith Wharton. It tells the story of Lily Bart, a well-born but impoverished woman belonging to New York City''s high society around the turn of the last century.[a] Wharton creates a portrait of a stunning beauty who, though raised and educated to marry well both socially and economically, is reaching her 29th year, an age when her youthful blush is drawing to a close and her marital prospects are becoming ever more limited. The House of Mirth traces Lily''s slow two-year social descent from privilege to a tragically lonely existence on the margins of society. In the words of one scholar, Wharton uses Lily as an attack on "an irresponsible, grasping and morally corrupt upper class.

Wealthy young American girls visit England and lay siege to the hearts of members of the nobility.

Edith Newbold Jones was born in New York on January 24, 1862. Born into wealth this background of privilege allowed her to write critic novels and stories about it culminating in her Pulitzer Prize winning novel ''The Age Of Innocence''. Marriage to Edward Robbins Wharton, who was 12 years older in 1885 allowed her to travel extensively. It was shortly apparent that her husband suffered from acuter depression and so the travelling ceased and they retired to The Mount, their estate designed by Edith Wharton . By 1908 his state was said to be incurable and prior to divorcing Edwards in 1913 she began an affair, in 1908, with Morton Fullerton, a Times journalist, who was her intellectual equal and allowed her writing talents to push forward and write the novels for which she is so well known. Acknowledged as one of the great American writers with novels such as Ethan Frome and the House Of Mirth among many. Wharton also wrote many short stories, including ghost stories and poems which we look at here in this volume. Edith Wharton died of a stroke in 1937 at the Domaine Le Pavillon Colombe, her 18th-century house on Rue de Montmorency in Saint-Brice-sous-Foret."

Controversial when it was first published in 1907 for its frank treatment of second marriages, desire, divorce, drug addiction and mercy killing, Edith Wharton''s The Fruit of the Tree addresses themes that remain strikingly relevant for today''s readers.

How is this book unique? Font adjustments & biography included Unabridged (100% Original content) Illustrated About Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton "Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton takes place in a shabby neighborhood in New York City. The two Bunner sisters, Ann Eliza the elder, and Evelina the younger, keep a small shop selling artificial flowers and small handsewn articles to Stuyvesant Square''s ""female population."" Ann Eliza gives Evelina a clock for her birthday. The clock leads the sisters to become involved with Herbert Ramy, owner of ""the queerest little store you ever laid eyes on."" Soon Ramy is a regular guest of the Bunner sisters, who realize that their ""treadmill routine,"" once so comfortable, is now ""intolerably monotonous."" Ramy''s appearance also begins to distancethe sisters from each other, as Ann Eliza notes pathetic signs of flirtation in Evelina. Ann Eliza decides to sacrifice her own hopes and yearnings for those of her younger sister. In spite of Ramy''s frequent visits to the Bunner sisters, his background remains shrouded to them; the sisters'' naiveté blinds them to Ramy''s unexplained absences, from which he returns with ""dull eyes"" and a face the color of ""yellow ashes."" "