The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies...

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...

Nick Lansing and Susy Branch are two young and attractive, but penniless New Yorkers. They decide to marry, but realize their chances of happiness are slim without the wealth, taken for granted by their more privileged friends. Nick and Susy agree to separate if either of them encounters a more eligible proposition and set out on a lavish honeymoon in Europe, funded by their wealthier friends. Unexpected feelings and jealous passions ensue, set against...

Written in 1912 and set in and around London, "The Reef" is a story of complex morality and its intricately woven place in society. This narrative primarily follows George Darrow and Anna Leath, a young gentleman and a widowed lady who plan to marry. Both of them experience doubts about their union, with surprising outcomes. Darrow has a brief liaison with the delicate, generous Sophy Viner, a kind woman of the working class. She later meets Anna's...

The Descent of Man and Other Stories offers the author's well-known depictions of upper class life in New York, but also exhibits her remarkable talent in tales of humorous irony, history and the supernatural. Originally published in 1904 The Descent of Man and Other Stories features the author's nuanced prose and sharply observed characters in a chain of unforgettable tales. In several Wharton examines marriage, which was frequently arranged in...

What begins as an ordinary event quickly shifts into the bizarre after the narrator, a wealthy bachelor, meets their friend, Lanvivain, at an old mansion. Thinking about purchasing the property, the narrator and Lanvivain explore the mansion at Kerfol, attracted to the vast and ordinate property. Lanvivain enthusiastically urges the bachelor to buy the property, declaring that it matches his personality exactly. The narrator, however, is unconvinced,...

Edith Wharton was an American novelist, poet and short story writer whose works display a mastery over the realistic fiction genre. One of her earliest and more experimental works was "Sanctuary". Written in 1903, the novella takes on a popular topic of debate in the early 1900s: nature versus nurture. Kate Orme marries a dishonest, sinful man who passes away, leaving her with a son. Fearing that he may inherit his father's immoral ways, Kate devotes...

The first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize, for her novel "The Age of Innocence", Edith Wharton was discouraged by her mother from pursuing her writing at an early age. Despite this she would go on to produce a prolific body of work which included many novels and short stories. Characteristic to her work is the subtle use of dramatic irony and having grown up in a prominent New York family she would become one the most astute critics of pre-World War...

Thousands of books on interior design have come and gone since the 1897 publication of this pioneering manual, but The Decoration of Houses remains, thanks to the insightful and inspiring advice of its co-authors. Before she became the Pulitzer Prize—winning author of “The Age of Innocence”, Edith Wharton was a society matron, remodeling a summer home in Newport, Rhode Island. With the able assistance of architect Ogden Codman, Jr., Wharton...

Seven short stories from one of the most celebrated authors of the early twentieth century have been updated with an eye toward readability for modern readers. The bones of the stories are just as she told them with no changes to plot or settings. Best of all the book includes the original unedited versions in appendices. The Hermit and the Wild Woman: One escapes from war, the other from a convent, only to find themselves together in their solitude. The...