Books by Edith Wharton

Book SynopsisShedding the turn-of-the-century social confines she felt existed for women in America, Edith Wharton set out in the newly invented motor-car to explore the cities and countryside of France. In A Motor-Flight Through France, originally published in 1908, Wharton combines the power of her prose, her love for travel, and her affinity for France to produce this compelling travelogue. Now back in print, this edition of will interest students of American literature as well as those who wish to see France through the eyes of a great American writer. The introduction analyzes Wharton''s use of the genre of travel writing and places Wharton''s work in the context of her life and times.Trade ReviewWharton's reflections will still charm those who've been and those who dream. A nice addition to American literature as well as travel collections. * Library Journal *Those who have been charmed with Mrs. Wharton's novels will not be disappointed by her venture into the unfamiliar role of a travel writer. * New York Times *A portrait of a long-forgotten France, a country that, when Wharton ranged over it in her 1904 Panhard-Levassor, was largely unchanged from medieval times. * New York Times Book Review *Table of ContentsTable of Contents Preface Note on the Text Introduction by Mary Suzanne Schriber Part I I. Boulogne to Amiens II. Beauvais and Rouen III. From Rouen to Fontainebleau IV. The Loire and the Indre V. Nohant to Clermont VI. In Auverge VII. Royat to Bourges Part II I. Paris to Poitiers II. Poitiers to the Pyrenees III. The Pyrenees to Provence IV. The Rhone to the Seine Part III A Flight to the North-East

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Extraordinarily poignant.... Heartrending, tragic, powerful, this is not to be missed."—Publishers Weekly "Wharton has done nothing that equals this."—New York Times Book Review (1923) "Wharton has painted a moving landscape."—War, Literature & the ArtsTable of ContentsTable of Contents Introduction by Shari Benstock Book One: Chapters I–IX Book Two: Chapters X–XXIII Book Three: Chapters XXIV–XXXI Book Four: Chapters XXXII–XXXVI

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Book SynopsisShedding the constraints that existed for women in turn-of-the-century America, the author set out in the newly invented "motor-car" to explore the cities and countryside of France. Originally published in 1908, this book is considered by many to be the very best of the author's travel writings.Trade ReviewWharton's reflections will still charm those who've been and those who dream. A nice addition to American literature as well as travel collections. * Library Journal *Those who have been charmed with Mrs. Wharton's novels will not be disappointed by her venture into the unfamiliar role of a travel writer. * New York Times *A portrait of a long-forgotten France, a country that, when Wharton ranged over it in her 1904 Panhard-Levassor, was largely unchanged from medieval times. * New York Times Book Review *Table of ContentsTable of Contents Preface Note on the Text Introduction by Mary Suzanne Schriber Part I I. Boulogne to Amiens II. Beauvais and Rouen III. From Rouen to Fontainebleau IV. The Loire and the Indre V. Nohant to Clermont VI. In Auverge VII. Royat to Bourges Part II I. Paris to Poitiers II. Poitiers to the Pyrenees III. The Pyrenees to Provence IV. The Rhone to the Seine Part III A Flight to the North-East

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Book SynopsisA comienzos del XX el viaje a Europa era un género tan popular como desgastado. Lo que aporta Edith Wharton es ímpetu y gozo, horror a los caminos trillados, una mirada perspicaz y un bagaje intelectual asombroso. Vida, arte y escritura se alían para contrarrestar los angostos interiores de Vieja Nueva York o La edad de la inocencia, su mundo, al que contrapuso la exaltación del horizonte inabarcable.Una de las primeras norteamericanas en tener coche propio, contagió su pasión por la carretera a su amigo Henry James, que la nombró el ?Águila Dorada?. El coche, ?en su vertiginoso pasar?, permitía explorar carreteras secundarias, lugares ensimismados y desconocidos. Esta antología de textos de viaje, que recopila la profesora Teresa Gómez Reus, extrae ejemplos de su mirada nada convencional cuando se asoma al Monte Athos, muestra su pasmosa erudición en Italia, Francia o España, o posa una mirada femenina y crítica sobre la sordidez de los harenes en Marruecos, ?sepulcros blanqueados?, con ?una concepción de la vida sexual y doméstica que se basa en el esclavismo?.España le fascinó desde que la transitara con su familia en destartalas diligencias a la edad de cuatro años. Ya en su madurez hizo repetidas incursiones desde su hogar en Francia, varias de ellas con el gran amor de su vida, Walter Berry. Con él viaja por Cataluña y las dos Castillas, y recorre el Camino de Santiago. Su Viaje por España en cuatro ruedas iba a ser uno de sus últimos libros de viaje que, por desgracia, no llegó a escribir. Algunos de sus breves textos y el diario conciso de las rutas que realizó se han incluido en esta antología como evidencia de su genuina atracción por nuestro país.

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Book Synopsis"La edad de la inocencia" pertenece a esa categoría de obras escritas durante la Gran Guerra o la posguerra en las que los fantasmas de la conflagración se resisten a descansar. Se infiere de ese sentimientode pérdida que llevó a la autora a escribir la novela y en su agudaconciencia del devenir de la historia y la caducidad de la vida.

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Book SynopsisWharton, la primera mujer en recibir el prestigioso Premio Pulitzer y, seguramente, la novelista norteamericana más importante de su generación, publicó en la revista Scribner?s a mediados de los años veinte una serie de ensayos dedicados a la técnica, la práctica y el oficio de la creación literaria. Escribir ficción es una brillante aproximación a las claves de la ficción moderna, en el que, con sencillez y rigor, desgrana técnicas y re-cursos para desarrollar el estilo y la estructura narrativa, contar un cuento o desarrollar los personajes, entre otros aspectos y mecanismos. Escribir ficción es un notable ?manual de escritura creativa? con visos de convertirse en referencia indispensable en la bibliografía del género, pero no solo: con un capítulo dedicado a Marcel Proust y un broche a este volumen acerca de la lectura, es posible, al mismo tiempo, compartir las experiencias propias de un creador inimitable como, sin duda, lo fue la autora de La edad de la inocencia.

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Book SynopsisMientras se iban publicando los relatos reunidos en el segundo volumen de estos Cuentos completos, entre 1909 y 1937, Edith Wharton se adentrará en el siglo xx, en el que vivirá las fracturas sociales del nacimiento del siglo, el conflicto de la I Guerra Mundial en primera persona, el periodo de entreguerras y el Crack del 29. Son los cuentos que aparecieron antes y después de su novela universal, La edad de la inocencia (Premio Pulitzer en 1921). Son sus décadas de mayor esplendor literario, donde su prosa alcanzó las mayores cotas de calidad y sus cuentos reflejaron como pocos el advenimiento de un nuevo mundo y una nueva sensibilidad.

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Book SynopsisEdith Wharton''s novels of manners seem to grow in stature as time passes. Here she draws a beautiful social climber, Undine Sprague, who is a monster of selfishness and honestly doesn''t know it. Although the worlds she wants to conquer have vanished, Undine herself is amazingly recognizable. She marries well above herself twice and both times fails to recognize her husbands'' strengths of character or the weakness of her own, and it is they, not she, who pay the price.Trade Review"Edith Wharton's finest achievement."--Elizabeth Hardwick

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Book SynopsisSelected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all timeNewland Archer saw little to envy in the marriages of his friends, yet he prided himself that in May Welland he had found the companion of his needs--tender and impressionable, with equal purity of mind and manners. The engagement was announced discreetly, but all of New York society was soon privy to this most perfect match, a union of families and circumstances cemented by affection.        Enter Countess Olenska, a woman of quick wit sharpened by experience, not afraid to flout convention and determined to find freedom in divorce. Against his judgment, Newland is drawn to the socially ostracized Ellen Olenska, who opens his eyes and has the power to make him feel. He knows that in sweet-tempered May, he can expect stability and the steadying comfort of duty. But what new worlds could he discover with Ellen? Written with elegance and wry precision, Edith Wharton''s Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece is a tragic love story and a powerful homily about the perils of a perfect marriage.Commentary by William Lyon Phelps and E. M. Forster

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Book SynopsisA pair of masterly short novels, featuring an introduction by Elizabeth Strout, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Anything Is Possible and My Name Is Lucy Barton   Thought Edith Wharton is best known for her cutting contemplation of fashionable New York, Ethan Frome and Summer are set in small New England towns, far from Manhattan’s beau monde. Together in one volume, these thematically linked short novels display Wharton’s characteristic criticism of society’s hypocrisy, and her daring exploration of the destructive consequences of sexual appetite. From the wintry setting of Ethan Frome, where a man hounded by community standards is destroyed by the very thing that might bring him happiness, to the florid town of Summer, where a young woman’s first romance projects her into a dizzying rite of passage, Wharton captures beautifully the urges and failures of human nature.   Prai

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Book SynopsisOn a bleak New England farm, a taciturn young man has resigned himself to a life of grim endurance. Bound by circumstance to a woman he cannot love, Ethan Frome is haunted by a past of lost possibilities until his wife’s orphaned cousin, Mattie Silver, arrives and he is tempted to make one final, desperate effort to escape his fate. In language that is spare, passionate, and enduring, Edith Wharton tells this unforgettable story of two tragic lovers overwhelmed by the unrelenting forces of conscience and necessity.Included with Ethan Frome are the novella The Touchstone and three short stories, “The Last Asset,” “The Other Two,” and “Xingu.” Together, this collection offers a survey of the extraordinary range and power of one of America’s finest writers.

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Book SynopsisEdith Wharton was at the height of her enormous literary powers when she published The Reef in 1912, and everything about this novel suggests a mastery so complete that it can achieve nothing higher. The plot, which tells of the drastic effects of a casual sexual betrayal on the lives of four Americans in France, is expertly turned, suspenseful, continually compelling. An assured, unhurried dramatic instinct governs the great moments of confrontation and revelation. The central characters, two of whom are innocents and two of whom are burdened by experience and tinged with desperation, are perfectly delineated: their relationships to one another are constructed with a classical feeling for harmony, proportion, and balance. And the entire novel is imbued with a clear-eyed wisdom about both the possibilities and the limitations of human love. Wharton would go on to write splendid books after completing The Reef, but nowhere does she display a finer command of

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Book SynopsisCollected in this Library of America volume are no fewer than six of the works of Edith Wharton: novels, novellas, and her renowned autobiography, A Backward Glance. Together they represent nearly a quarter century in the productive life of one of the most accomplished and admired of American writers.Madame de Treymes (1907) is set in fashionable Paris society, where a once free-spirited American woman is trying to extricate herself, with the help of a fellow countryman, from her marriage to an aristocratic Frenchman. Such a village is the scene of Ethan Frome (1911), a tale of marital entrapment even more relentless. Ethan’s unhappy marriage and his desperate love for his wife’s cousin Mattie drive him to an act of shattering violence. The magnificent coda is a classic of American realistic fiction.Set in the same region of the Berkshires, Wharton called Summer (1917) “the Hot Etha

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Book SynopsisLibrary of America presents the first volume in a landmark two-volume collector's edition of the incomparable stories of an American masterBorn into an upper-class New York family, Edith Wharton broke with convention and became a professional writer, earning an enduring place as the grande dame of American letters. This Library of America collection (along with its companion volume, Collected Stories: 1911–1937) presents the finest of Wharton's achievement in short fiction, drawn from the more than eighty stories she published over the course of her career. Opening with her first published story—the charming "Mrs. Manstey's View," about a disruption in the life of an elderly apartment-dweller—this first of two volumes presents a writer, already at the height of her powers, beginning to explore the concerns of a lifetime. In "Souls Belated," two lovers attempt to escape the consequences of their adultery—a subject to which Wharton returns throughout her career. In "The Mission of Jane" (about a remarkable adopted child) and "The Pelican" (about an itinerant lecturer), she discovers her gift for social and cultural satire. Perhaps the finest of her ghost stories, "The Eyes," with its Jamesian sense of evil, is also included, along with two novella-length works, "The Touchstone" and "Sanctuary," revealing the dazzling range of Wharton's fictive imagination. Also included in this edition are a chronology of Wharton's life, explanatory notes, and an essay on the texts.LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.Trade Review"Wharton's examinations of upper-class New York society were rendered in effortless prose so subtle that many readers missed the depth and breadth of her art. These two collections of short fiction belong on the shelves of anyone who loves literature." —Dallas Morning News"A splendid and satisfying publication, and a landmark in the history of Edith Wharton’s ever-shifting reputation." —New York Review of Books

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Book SynopsisFrom first to last, poetry was part of Edith Wharton’s writing life. While rarely (after early youth) her primary focus, it always served her as a medium for recording the most vivid impressions and emotions, an intimate journal of longings and regrets. “Poetry was important to Wharton,” writes editor Louis Auchincloss, “because it enabled her to express the deeply emotional side of her nature that she kept under such tight control, not only in her life but in the ordered sweep of her fiction.”In later years her poetry also engaged with the public passions of wartime, as she found herself involved with the plight of Allied soldiers in France. Her first models were Romantic, but in the course of her life she absorbed the influences of Symbolism and Modernism; and throughout her poetic career she showed a care for form even in her most private utterances, as in the erotic ode “Terminus,” never published in her lifetime. This volume collects the bulk of Wharton’s significant poetry, including much work previously uncollected or unpublished.About the American Poets ProjectElegantly designed in compact editions, printed on acid-free paper, and textually authoritative, the American Poets Project makes available the full range of the American poetic accomplishment, selected and introduced by today’s most discerning poets and critics.

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Book SynopsisCuando era todavía un joven escritor huido de la Rusia de la Revolución, y totalmente desconocido, William Gerhardie escribió una carta llena de admiración a Edith Wharton y ella le invitó a su villa en Hyères. Gracias a su educación ?era hijo de ricos industriales ingleses instalados en San Petersburgo? el timidísimo Gerhardie logró mimetizarse entre los ilustres invitados de la mansión y no habló con nadie durante casi dos días, hasta que se atrevió a preguntar a su corpulenta vecina de mesa quién era la dueña de la casa y se oyó un aterrador y frío Soy yo. Sólo un personaje así podía escribir una novela como ésta. Tal vez la única novela cómica ambientada en la Rusia mitad blanca y mitad roja de los años 1920. Todo se derrumba, pero el protagonista, Nikolai Vasilievich, sigue ocupándose de sus minas de oro en Siberia y cultivando el espléndido ramillete de sus tres hijas, cada una fascinante a su manera. Eso conlleva recibir en casa un sinfín de amantes, parientes diversos, estafadores, parásitos y meras comparsas que dan pie a una sofisticadísima comedia de equívocos y traiciones. El resultado es un libro, de un magnífico estilista, que parece destilar en cada página una delicia volátil y un tanto ácida, como muy bien dijo Giorgio Manganelli.

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Book Synopsis?On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York...?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. The story is set in upper-class New York City in the 1870s, during the so-called Gilded Age.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 title is an ironic comment on the polished outward manners of New York society when compared to its inward machinations.

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Book SynopsisEncuadernación: RústicaEl profesor Trenham sufre remordimientos por haber engañado a su esposa, que acaba de morir inesperadamente, un hecho que todos atribuyen a su carácter emotivo y nervioso. Tan apesadumbrado como asustado, Trenham decide romper con su joven amante cuando su mujer apenas acaba de ser enterrada. Edith Wharton recrea en El día del entierro la psicología de un machista, de un egoísta incapaz de afrontar la vida en solitario ni de pensar en la felicidad de su pareja. Un desenlace inesperado pondrá un poco de justicia en este retrato social de una época que, por desgracia, todavía resulta demasiado actual.

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