Bunner Sisters

Edith Wharton

Originally published in 1916, but actually written in 1890, Bunner Sisters is a compelling, heartbreaking little novella about two sisters, who have never been apart, struggling to eek an existence as small shopkeepers on the margins of late nineteenth-century society in New York. They barely make enough money to live on. But when Ann Eliza the elder buys Evelina the younger a clock that does not work for her birthday, the sisters commence a relationship with Herbert Ramy, who operates a queer little shop, setting in motion a series of events that will prove to be everyones undoing. Edith Wharton provides a vivid description of the life of shop keepers and their friends in the poorer urban areas of New York City.

Crucial Instances

Edith Wharton

Originally published in 1901, Crucial Instances is the second collection of six short stories connected, as the title suggests, by a hinging moment in the narrative through which the plot alters dramatically. The contents included the following: The Duchess at Prayer, The Angel at the Grave, The Recovery, Copy: A Dialogue, The Rembrandt, The Moving Finger and The Confessional.This is a great collection of stories, where Edith Wharton shows her wide range of talents, from those with a bit of a horror feel, to ones which just make the reader feel good. There is one Dialogue or play, several written in third person, several in first person, written from a mans point of view and some from a womans. All of them are carefully crafted to show a particular attitude or character or scene in great detail. Highly recommended!

Duchy i ludzie

Edith Wharton

Życie przedstawicieli amerykańskiej arystokracji zdaje się spokojne i radosne. W rzeczywistości za murami wystawnych domów często skrywa się zdrada, małżeńska przemoc, poczucie samotności, toksyczne relacje. A do tego niejednokrotnie przypominają o sobie duchy przodków lub dawnych mieszkańców. Ingerencja sił nadprzyrodzonych jednym bohaterom pomaga wyjść z opresji, a innym wymierza sprawiedliwość - zawsze jednak budzi przestrach czytelnika. Idealna lektura dla miłośników subtelnej grozy w stylu Mary E. Wilkins Freeman.

Ethan Frome

Edith Wharton

In the early years of the 20th century, life on a farm in Massachusetts is not easy. The New England winters are hard; snow and ice cover the fields for months, and the nights are long and cold. For a poor farmer like Ethan Frome, life has few bright moments. He works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious and hypochondriac wife, Zeena. But when Zeenas young and beautiful cousin Mattie Silver enters their household as a hired girl, Ethan finds himself obsessed with her and with the possibilities for happiness she comes to represent. Edith Whartons Ethan Frome is a classic of American Literature, with compelling characters trapped in circumstances from which they seem unable to escape.

Madame de Treymes

Edith Wharton

Even a short novel like Madame de Treymes shows you what a masterful writer Edith Wharton was. It is a captivating portrait of turn-of-the-century American and French culture. Inspired by Whartons own entré into Parisian society in 1906 and reminiscent of the works of Henry James, it tells the story of two young innocents abroad: Fanny Frisbee of New York, unhappily married to the dissolute Marquis de Malrive, and John Durham, her childhood friend who arrives in Paris intent on convincing Fanny to divorce her husband and marry him instead. In hopes of finding a solution, Durham meets with Fannys sister-in-law, the enigmatic Madame de Treymes, who suggests that she might be willing to appeal to her brother on his behalf if, that is, he will help settle her illicit lovers gambling debts. Such a proposition surely wont have a catch...

Sanctuary

Edith Wharton

Kate Orme is a young woman whose illusions of marital bliss are shattered when she comes face to face with the dark secret harbored by her fiancé, the wealthy and deceptively ebullient Denis. Kate decides to go ahead and by societys willingness to overlook such transgressions, nevertheless marries him. Years later, her son faces a moral crisis similar to the one that showed her his fathers moral weakness. With the precision, beauty, and sharp awareness of the cracks in upper-class New York society that made her one of the great writers of the twentieth century, Edith Wharton offers a subtle critique of the nature versus nurture debate that raged in the early 1900s. Sanctuary is a spare and moving investigation of the forces that impel human beings toward sin, self-doubt, and redemption.

Siostry Bunner

Edith Wharton

Co lepsze: smutek braku perspektyw czy gorycz porażki? Anna Eliza i Ewelina, choć są siostrami, różnią się od siebie jak ogień i woda. Starsza stale się poświęca i podporządkowuje odgórnym zasadom. Młodsza nie ma tendencji do współodczuwania, skupia się raczej na sobie. Młode kobiety prowadzą wspólnie mały sklepik na przedmieściach Nowego Jorku i do tego właściwie ogranicza się cała ich życiowa aktywność. Sytuacja ulega zmianie, gdy starsza kupuje młodszej na urodziny zegar w sklepie prowadzonym przez interesującego mężczyznę. Anna Eliza pierwszy raz w życiu nabiera odwagi, by zawalczyć o siebie. Czy dostanie wsparcie od siostry? I czy dojrzały mężczyzna odwzajemni jej rozpaczliwe uczucie? Głęboka powieść psychologiczna laureatki Nagrody Pulitzera. Idealna propozycja lekturowa dla miłośników twórczości Marii Kuncewiczowej czy Zofii Nałkowskiej.

Summer

Edith Wharton

Considered by some to be her finest work, Edith Whartons Summer created a sensation when first published in 1917, as it was one of the first novels to deal honestly with a young womans sexual awakening. Seventeen-year-old Charity Royall is desperate to escape life with her hard-drinking adoptive father. Their isolated village stifles her, and his behavior increasingly disturbs her. When a young city architect Lucius Harney visits for the summer, it offers Charity the chance to break free. But as they embark on an intense affair, will it bring her another kind of trap? Praised for its realism and honesty by such writers as Joseph Conrad and Henry James and compared to Flauberts Madame Bovary, Summer remains as fresh and powerful a novel today as when it was first written.

Tales of Men and Ghosts

Edith Wharton

In 1921, Edith Wharton became the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize, earning the award for The Age of Innocence. But Wharton also wrote several other novels, as well as poems and short stories that made her not only famous but popular among her contemporaries. Tales of Men and Ghosts (1910) consists of ten masterful ghost stories that listed here in chronological order of their original publication dates: The Bolted Door, His Fathers Son, The Daunt Diana, The Debt, Full Circle, The Legend, The Eyes, The Blond Beast, Afterward and The Letters. Despite the title, the men outnumber the ghosts, since only The Eyes and Afterward actually call on the supernatural. In only two of the stories are women the central characters, though elsewhere they play important roles. If you have never read Edith Whartons fantasy work before, you will be captivated and delighted.

The Age of Innocence

Edith Wharton

One of Edith Whartons most famous novels the first by a woman to win the Pulitzer Prize exquisitely details a tragic struggle between love and responsibility during the sumptuous Golden Age of Old New York, a time when society people dreaded scandal more than disease. Newland Archer, a restrained young attorney, is engaged to the lovely May Welland but falls in love with Mays beautiful and unconventional cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska who returns to New York after a disastrous marriage to a Polish count. Torn between duty and passion, Archer struggles to make a decision that will either courageously define his life or mercilessly destroy it. An incisive look at the ways desire and emotion must negotiate the complex rules of society, The Age of Innocence is one of Whartons most moving works.

The Custom of the Country

Edith Wharton

Edith Whartons 1913 novel is a devastating critique of American upward mobility, told through the journey of Undine Spragg from fictional Midwestern Apex City to New York to Paris. Undine Spragg is one of the most ruthless characters in all of literature, as selfishly unscrupulous as she is fiercely beautiful. As Undine climbs the social ladder through a series of marriages and affairs, she shows little concern for who she has to step on to get anything and everything she desires. Wharton weaves an elaborate plot that renders a detailed depiction of upper class social behavior in the early twentieth century. By utilizing a character with inexorable greed in a novel of manners, she demonstrates some of the customs of a modern age and posits a surprising explanation for divorce and the social role of women, which still resonates for the modern reader today.

The Descent of Man and Other Stories

Edith Wharton

The Descent of Man and Other Stories is the third collection of ten short fiction from Edith Wharton, first published in 1904. It includes the title piece Descent of Man, as well as The Other Two, Expiation, The Ladys Maids Bell, The Mission of Jane, The Reckoning, The Letter, The Dilettante, The Quicksand, and A Venetian Nights Entertainment. Wharton dissecting some of the customs, habits and vagaries of courtship and marriage, particularly as practiced in the upper reaches of New York society at the turn of the twentieth century. Fidelity is only one problem; others may arise from the machinations and emotions of the protagonists or outsiders. Wharton handles the questions with her usual gentle irony and curiosity about human behavior.

The Fruit of the Tree

Edith Wharton

Published in 1907, this little novel by the author of The Age of Innocence was considered controversial for its frank treatment of labor and industrial conditions, drug addiction, mercy killing, divorce, and second marriages. Clever, idealistic and poor John Amherst, the assistant manager of the cotton mill, is fed up with the deplorable working and living conditions of the workers in his charge. While visiting a worker in hospital he encounters a young nurse, Justine, compassionate and principled, a woman who shares his dreams and aims. But Amherst is fatally distracted when he meets a wealthy and charming widow Bessy who is a new owner of the mill. The lives of all three become strangely interwoven as Amherst is forced to choose between sense and sentiment, between his care for the working classes and his infatuation with Bessy a woman made for passion, but not for its aftermath.

The Glimpses of the Moon

Edith Wharton

Set in the 1920s, 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 are in love and decide to marry, but realize their chances of happiness are slim without the wealth and society that their more privileged friends take for granted. Nick and Susy agree to separate when either encounters a more eligible proposition. Their conditional marriage begins to falter as Susy grows jealous of her husbands attentions to a wealthy young woman and Nick becomes increasingly disgruntled by the moral compromises arising from his wifes social negotiations. An expertly drawn portrait of two young lovers, caught between bright-eyed passion and the bitter allure of wealth.

The Greater Inclination

Edith Wharton

This is Edith Whartons earliest published collection of 8 short stories (1899). A selection consists: Muses Tragedy: Unrequited love between a poet and his muse. The Journey: A woman journeys with her ailing husband. The Pelican: A woman supports her son. Souls Belated: The pressure put on couples to marry. A Coward: A man recounts his cowardice past. The Twilight of the God: Past lovers meet under a husbands eye. A Cup of Cold Water: Redemption song. The Portrait: One of Whartons earliest short stories, when a painter paints your flaws. Like much of Whartons later work, they touch on themes of marriage, male/female relationships, New York society, and the nature and purpose of art. Give yourselves a treat, and read this short but unforgettable diverse collection!

The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories

Edith Wharton

Seven short stories from the prolific Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist Edith Wharton. With a wide variety of protagonists a cloistered monk to a struggling artist to a Governor to a New England lawyers wife she is flexing her writing muscles and trying on personas. Includes The Last Asset, In Trust, The Pretext, The Verdict, The Pot-Boiler, and The Best Man. In the title story, the reader learns that the hermit, as a young boy, witnessed the killing of his parents and sister during an attack on his town. As a result of his trauma, he has retreated into isolation until he meets a wild woman who comes to live nearby. Highly recommended when you want something short but stimulating between longer reads!

The House of Mirth

Edith Wharton

Is Lily Bart a victim of circumstance or an agent of her own destruction? Edith Whartons acutely observed novel poses this question as it follows Lilys tragic path through the country houses, card tables and drawing rooms of New Yorks beau monde at the turn of the 20th century. Impoverished but well-born, Lily realizes a secure future depends on her acquiring a wealthy husband. Her desire for a comfortable life means that she will not marry for love without money, but her resistance to the rules of the social elite endangers her many marriage proposals and leads to a dramatic downward spiral into debt and dishonor. More a tale of social exclusion than of failed love, The House of Mirth reveals Whartons compelling gifts as a storyteller and her clear-eyed observations of the savagery beneath the well-bred surface of high society.

The Marne. A Tale of the War

Edith Wharton

American writer Edith Wharton is known for her novels of manners set in old New York; yet much of her adult life was spent in France. She lived in Paris throughout World War I and was heavily involved in refugee work. She was a hugely successful writer and the first woman ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Age of Innocence. In this 1918 novella, we are introduced to the story of 15-year-old Troy Belknap who is from a wealthy family in New York but yearns to serve in the area of France along the Marne River where critical World War I battles took place, known as The Marne. Wharton takes the reader on a dizzying journey down the line between Troys rose-colored, heroic ambitions, the grim realities of the war, and the often hollow and ugly attitudes of Americans at home.

The Reef

Edith Wharton

This is Whartons fifth novel. It is considered, together with the previous Ethan Frome and the subsequent The Custom of the Country, as partly autobiographical. Young diplomat George Darrow is on his way to meet Anna Leath, an old girlfriend who is now a widow with a young daughter and a grown stepson. When Anna abruptly postpones their rendezvous without explanation, Darrow concludes that she is no longer interested in him. He has a brief liaison with the delicate, generous Sophy Viner, a kind woman of the working class. Unfortunately, the lives of Darrow, Anna, Sophy and Annas stepson Owen become linked and the extremely discreet sexual relationship between Darrow and Sophy complicates their lives. Whartons talent for balancing emotional turmoil and all the social manners of her time is blended into this philosophical work that explores the metaphorical reefs in the hearts of women.

The Touchstone

Edith Wharton

Glennard had never thought himself a hero; but he had been certain that he was incapable of baseness. The central character, Stephen Glennard, sells for publication the private letters of a former, deceased lover, who had become a famous writer, so that he can finance his marriage to the girl he loves. The letters are a success, and he is able to be married. But when the guilt becomes unbearable and he confesses his transgression to his new wife, will she be able to forgive him? Will he be able to forgive himself? The debut novella from one of Americas greatest authors Edith Wharton, first published in 1900. It was also published under the title A Gift From The Grave.

The Valley of Decision

Edith Wharton

Published in 1902, The Valley of Decision is Edith Whartons first full length novel set in late 18th century Italy. In it, Odo Valsecca, a young Italian raised by peasants, is plucked from poverty and dropped into the lap of luxury as the newly named heir to his cousin, a duke. It is the time leading up to the French revolution, and Europe swirls with conflicting factions and ideologies, some trying to prop up the feudal and religious traditions that empowered them, and others seeking a new way. Meanwhile, in France, a revolution is brewing... Forced to choose between conflicting loyalties those to the forces of social reform with which he allied himself before he came to power, or those of the feudal tradition to which he belongs by blood Odo must define himself.