"Is it -- in this world -- vulgar to ask for more? To entreat a little wildness, a dark place or two in the soul?"
-- Katherine Mansfield
"There is no woman in American literature as fascinating as the doomed Madame Olenska. . . . Traditionally, Henry James has always been placed slightly higher up the slope of Parnassus than Edith Wharton. But now that the prejudice against the female writer is on the wane, they look to be exactly what they are: giants, equals, the tutelary and benign gods of our American literature."
-- Gore Vidal
"Will writers ever recover...
"Is it -- in this world -- vulgar to ask for more? To entreat a little wildness, a dark place or two in the soul?"
"The Touchstone" was Edith Wharton's first published novella, and it's spare, perhaps even underwritten. Even so, this Faustian tale of a man who stoops to publish love letters for money has mesmerizing, even dangerous qualities -- it has betrayals, greed, and consequences faced: hidden meanings emerge in places where we do not expect to find them. Perhaps, like Stephen Glennard in "The Touchstone," we will go mad with guilt, proving we do after all have a conscience. . . .
"The Touchstone" was Edith Wharton's first published novella, and it's spare, perhaps even underwritten. Even so, this Faustian tale of a man who stoo...
Edith Wharton's "Madame de Treymes" is a remarkable example of the form. It is the story of the tactical defeat but moral victory of an honest and upstanding American in his struggle to win a wife from a tightly united but feudally minded French aristocratic family. He loses, but they cheat. . . . In a masterpiece of brevity, Wharton dramatizes the contrast between the two opposing forces: the simple and proper old brownstone New York, low in style but high in principle, and the achingly beautiful but decadent Saint-Germain district of Paris. The issue is seamlessly joined.
Louis...
Edith Wharton's "Madame de Treymes" is a remarkable example of the form. It is the story of the tactical defeat but moral victory of an honest and ups...
Born into the "hoi polloi" of New York society in 1862, Edith Wharton married in 1885, and that marriage was a disappointment -- she may well have been born and bred to be a society wife, but she was a woman with "talent, " and it was a talent that would not leave her in peace. She published her first story in 1889, and numerous books in the years that followed. Among those books were "The Touchstone" (1900), "Crucial Instances" (1901), "The Valley of Decision" (1902), "Sanctuary" (1903), "The House of Mirth" (1905), "The Fruit of the Tree" (1907), "Madame de Treymes" (1907), "Ethan Frome"...
Born into the "hoi polloi" of New York society in 1862, Edith Wharton married in 1885, and that marriage was a disappointment -- she may well have bee...
Stephen Glennard's career is falling apart and he desperately needs money so that he may marry his beautiful fiancee. He happens upon an advertisement in a London magazine promising the prospect of financial gain. The Touchstone was Edith Wharton's first published novella, and it's spare, perhaps even underwritten. Even so, this Faustian tale of a man who stoops to publish love letters for money has mesmerizing, even dangerous qualities -- it has betrayals, greed, and consequences faced: hidden meanings emerge in places where we do not expect to find them. Perhaps, like Stephen Glennard in...
Stephen Glennard's career is falling apart and he desperately needs money so that he may marry his beautiful fiancee. He happens upon an advertisem...
Ethan Frome, a novel by Edith Wahrton, is told by an unnamed narrator who recounts an encounter with Ethan Frome in a wintry town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. The story delves into Ethan Frome's attempt of escaping his small town upbringing and pursuing his dream career in science, until his parents illness' force him to return. Ethan meets a love interest, Zeena, in his time back home and also deals with his illnesses related to hypochondria.
Ethan Frome, a novel by Edith Wahrton, is told by an unnamed narrator who recounts an encounter with Ethan Frome in a wintry town of Starkfield, Massa...
Between what matters and what seems to matter, how should the world we know judge wisely? When the scheming, indomitable brain of Sigsbee Manderson was scattered by a shot from an unknown hand, that world lost nothing worth a single tear; it gained something memorable in a harsh reminder of the vanity of such wealth as this dead man had piled up-without making one loyal friend to mourn him, without doing an act that could help his memory to the least honor. But when the news of his end came, it seemed to those living in the great vortices of business as if the earth, too, shuddered under a...
Between what matters and what seems to matter, how should the world we know judge wisely? When the scheming, indomitable brain of Sigsbee Manderson wa...
Wharton's first full-length novel is set in 18th-century Italy. Here Wharton pits folks inspired by the anti-religious thoughts of Rousseau and Voltaire against the orthodox leaders of the day.
Wharton's first full-length novel is set in 18th-century Italy. Here Wharton pits folks inspired by the anti-religious thoughts of Rousseau and Voltai...
Edith Wharton's novels and short stories are full of her humorous understanding of the upper classes. She left America for France beginning in 1907 and stayed during World War 1. The Reef tells the story of Americans in France and the social conflicts they face. The morality in this novel revolves around a woman opposing the marriage of her stepson to a woman who has had an affair.
Edith Wharton's novels and short stories are full of her humorous understanding of the upper classes. She left America for France beginning in 1907 an...
