Most Popular Books by Edith Wharton

While ‘The Choice’ might be one of Wharton’s shorter stories, it nonetheless showcases her talents as a master storyteller. ‘The Choice’ focuses on the dilemma faced by Cobham Stilling, who is quickly burning the family fortune, much to the horror of his wife and lawyer. Packed with social detail and keen psychological insights, Wharton creates well-rounded characters and presents the reader with a choice that many of us would not like to have to make. Edith Wharton (1862 – 1937) was an American designer and novelist. Born in an era when the highest ambition a woman could aspire to was a good marriage, Wharton went on to become one of America’s most celebrated authors. During her career, she wrote over 40 books, using her wealthy upbringing to bring authenticity and detail to stories about the upper classes. She moved to France in 1923, where she continued to write until her death.

Chapter 1 Selden paused in surprise. In the afternoon rush of the Grand Central Station his eyes had been refreshed by the sight of Miss Lily Bart. It was a Monday in early September, and he was returning to his work from a hurried dip into the country; but what was Miss Bart doing in town at that season? If she had appeared to be catching a train, he might have inferred that he had come on her in the act of transition between one and another of the country-houses which disputed her presence after the close of the Newport season; but her desultory air perplexed him. She stood apart from the crowd, letting it drift by her to the platform or the street, and wearing an air of irresolution which might, as he surmised, be the mask of a very definite purpose. It struck him at once that she was waiting for some one, but he hardly knew why the idea arrested him. There was nothing new about Lily Bart, yet he could never see her without a faint movement of interest: it was characteristic of her that she always roused speculation, that her simplest acts seemed the result of far-reaching intentions. 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. "Mr. Selden—what good luck!" She came forward smiling, eager almost, in her resolve to intercept him. One or two persons, in brushing past them, lingered to look; for Miss Bart was a figure to arrest even the suburban traveller rushing to his last train. Selden had never seen her more radiant. Her vivid head, relieved against the dull tints of the crowd, made her more conspicuous than in a ball-room, and under her dark hat and veil she regained the girlish smoothness, the purity of tint, that she was beginning to lose after eleven years of late hours and indefatigable dancing. Was it really eleven years, Selden found himself wondering, and had she indeed reached the nine-and-twentieth birthday with which her rivals credited her?

Edith Wharton’s most widely read work is a tightly constructed and almost unbearably heartbreaking story of forbidden love in a snowbound New England village. This brilliantly wrought, tragic novella explores the repressed emotions and destructive passions of working-class people far removed from the elevated social milieu usually inhabited by Wharton’s characters. Ethan Frome is a poor farmer, trapped in a marriage to a demanding and controlling wife, Zeena. When Zeena’s young cousin Mattie enters their household she opens a window of hope in Ethan’s bleak life, but his wife’s reaction prompts a desperate attempt to escape fate that goes horribly wrong. Ethan Frome is an unforgettable story with the force of myth, featuring realistic and haunting characters as vivid as any Wharton ever conjured.

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. 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''". 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

"Edith Wharton''s The Decoration of Houses is one of the classic works on interior design, and a testament to the enduring style of one of America''s greatest writers. Written in collaboration with celebrated American architect Ogden Codman, Jr., Wharton''s first book is a comprehensive look at the history and character of turn-of-the-century interior design. The book moves from the historical traditions of decorating to the distinctive styles of contemporary taste."--BOOK JACKET.

Newland Archer, the ambivalent protagonist, represents the apogee of good breeding. He is the ultimate insider in post-Civil War New York society. Although engaged to May Welland, a beautiful and proper fellow member of elite society, he is attracted to the free-spirited Countess Ellen Olenska, May''s cousin and a former member of their circle who has been living in Europe but has left her husband, a cruel Polish nobleman, under mysterious circumstances and returned to her family''s New York milieu. His upcoming marriage to the young socialite will unite two of New York''s oldest families, but from the novel''s opening pages, Olenska imports a passionate intensity and mysterious Old World eccentricity that disrupt the conventional world of order-obsessed New York. Ellen''s hopes of being set free from her past are dashed when she is forced to choose between conformity and exile, while Newland''s appointment by the Welland family as Ellen''s legal consultant begins an emotional entanglement the force of which he could never have imagined.

Edith Wharton is best known for writing The House of Mirth and the Pulitzer prize winning novel, The Age of Innocence -- works that criticized the lifestyle of the upper class. In Bunner Sisters, however, Wharton writes about the lower middle class, a stark contrast to her previous works. Evelina and Ann Eliza are two spinster sisters living together in a one bedroom apartment. They mend clothes to make money though they run a small shop where they sell bonnets and preserves that they''ve made themselves. Their lives are ordinary, if not a bit dull. Then Mr. Ramy, the clock maker, enters their lives and it isn''t long before Evelina marries him. Right after the wedding day, Mr. Ramy takes Evelina away, leaving Ann Eliza guessing about Evelina''s whereabouts. She must delve into Mr. Ramy''s past in order to find her sister -- for Evelina may be in too much trouble for her to get out alone.

Ever since the age of six Troy Belknap of New York had embarked for Europe every June on the fastest steamer of one or another of the most expensive lines. With his family he had descended at the dock from a large noiseless motor, had kissed his father good-bye, turned back to shake hands with the chauffeur (a particular friend), and trotted up the gang-plank behind his mother''s maid, while one welcoming steward captured Mrs. Belknap''s bag, and another led away her miniature French bull-dog-also a particular friend of Troy''s. From that hour all had been delight. For six golden days Troy had ranged the decks, splashed in the blue salt water brimming his huge porcelain tub, lunched and dined with the grown-ups in the Ritz restaurant, and swaggered about in front of the children who had never crossed before, and didn''t know the stewards, or the purser, or the captain''s cat, or on which deck you might exercise your dog, or how to induce the officer on the watch to let you scramble up for a minute to the bridge. Then, when these joys began to pall, he had lost himself in others deeper and dearer. Another of his cronies, the library steward, had unlocked the book-case doors for him, and, buried for hours in the depths of a huge library armchair (there weren''t any to compare with it on land), he had ranged through the length and breadth of several literatures.

Set in the 1920s, The Glimpses of the Moon details the romantic misadventures of Nick Lansing and Susy Branch, a couple with the right connections but not much in the way of funds. They devise a shrewd bargain: they''ll marry and spend a year or so sponging off their wealthy friends, honeymooning in their mansions and villas. As Susy explains, "We should really, in a way, help more than hamper each other. We both know the ropes so well; what one of us didn''t see the other might -- in the way of opportunities, I mean." The other part of the plan states that if either one of them meets someone who can advance them socially, they''re each free to dissolve the marriage. How their plan unfolds is a comedy of eros that will charm all fans of Wharton''s work.

It Was Going to Be The Perfect Wedding - Until He Showed Up... The Age of Innocence centers on an upper-class couple''s impending marriage, and the introduction of the bride''s cousin, plagued by scandal, whose presence threatens their happiness. Though the novel questions the assumptions and morals of 1870s New York society, it never develops into an outright condemnation of the institution.The novel is noted for Wharton''s attention to detail and its accurate portrayal of how the 19th-century East Coast American upper class lived, and the social tragedy of its plot. Wharton was 58 years old at publication; she had lived in that world and had seen it change dramatically by the end of World War I. The title is an ironic comment on the polished outward manners of New York society when compared to its inward machinations. It is believed to have been drawn from the popular 1785 painting A Little Girl by Sir Joshua Reynolds that later became known as The Age of Innocence and was widely reproduced as the commercial face of childhood in the later half of the 18th century. The title, while ironic, was not as caustic as the title of story featured in the The House of Mirth, published in 1905. The Age of Innocence was a softer and more gentle work than The House of Mirth, set in the time of her childhood. Wharton wrote, "I found a momentary escape in going back to my childish memories of a long-vanished America... it was growing more and more evident that the world I had grown up in and been formed by had been destroyed in 1914." Scholars and readers alike agree that The Age of Innocence is fundamentally a story which struggles to reconcile the old with the new. Wharton was raised in that old world of rigid and proper New York society which features in the story. She spent her middle years, including the first World War in Europe where the devastation of new mechanized warfare was felt most deeply. As explained by Millicent Bell in the Cambridge companion to Wharton, "The Age of Innocence was composed and first read in the aftermath of Roosevelt''s death and in the immediate wake of World War I. We frame the ending remembering the multiple losses... not only the loss of Roosevelt but the destruction of the prewar world and all that Wharton valued in it." With the first World War, a definitive line was crossed. There would be no return to the New York of old from which Wharton was raised. And for all that can be condemned in that, there is a certain tenderness with which she crafts the world, "as if she had forgotten nothing." This intones the title word innocence, as the novel seems to connect personal innocence with that of national innocence. To Robert Martin, The Age of Innocence, was "fundamentally about America and its failure to fulfill its own possibilities". The Age of Innocence is Edith Wharton''s twelfth novel, initially serialized in four parts in the Pictorial Review magazine in 1920, and later released by D. Appleton and Company as a book in New York and in London. It won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, making Wharton the first woman to win the prize. Though the committee agreed to award the prize to Sinclair Lewis, the judges rejected his Main Street, on political grounds and "established Wharton as the American ''First Lady of Letters''", the irony being that the committee had awarded The Age of Innocence the prize on grounds that negated Wharton''s own blatant and subtle ironies which constitute and make the book so worthy of attention. The story is set in upper-class New York City in the 1870s, during the Gilded Age. Wharton wrote the book in her 50s, after she had established herself as a strong author with publishers clamoring for her work. (Wikipedia) Get Your Copy Now.

Ethan Frome was published in 1911, when Wharton was already an established and successful writer. She lived primarily in Paris between 1905 and the outbreak of World War II, and these years were productive. She was growing more self-assured in her art, and during the writing of Ethan Frome she felt control and confidence than she had never known before.