Edith Wharton
2) Ethan Frome
Set in New York in the 1920s, The Glimpses of the Moon details the romantic misadventures of Nick Lansing and Susy Branch, two high-society hangers-on with the right connections but a lack of funds. To maintain their status, they decide to marry and spend a year or so sponging off their wealthy friends, honeymooning in their mansions and villas. Both agree that they're free to dissolve the marriage if either one of them meets someone who can advance
...8) Summer
Wharton's most erotic and lyrical novel, Summer explores a daring theme for 1917: a woman's awakening to her sexuality.
Eighteen-year-old Charity Royall lives in the small town of North Dormer, ignorant of desire until the arrival of architect Lucius Harney. Independent yet kept from love until now by society's expectations, Charity finds herself wrapped up in a love affair with Harney.
Like the succulent summer landscape in the Berkshires
...9) The Reef
The Reef follows the fancies of George Darrow, a young diplomat en route from London to France, intent on proposing to the widowed Anna Leath. Unsettled by Anna's reticence, Darrow drifts into an affair with Sophy Viner, a charmingly naïve and impecunious young woman whose relations with Darrow and Anna's family threaten his prospects for success. The affair becomes the reef on which four lives are in danger of foundering: two of them innocent,
...11) The Touchstone
This spare, mesmerizing novel is Edith Wharton's money-can't-buy-happiness tale. Young Stephen Glennard is poor, but he has an unanticipated gambling chip: a collection of love letters from a scorned but now famous lover, the distinguished novelist Margaret Aubyn. To raise money for his forthcoming wedding to another woman, Stephen stoops to selling the letters. His decision brings him wealth and admission to society, but a mystery contained in
...12) False Dawn
The first of four novellas, together called Old New York, set in the mid-1800s.
Lewis Raycie is sent on a grand tour of Europe with instructions from his father to acquire a collection of accepted Art Works. His father's dream is to own a Raphael; instead, Lewis returns with a priceless collection of Renaissance masterpieces by Piero della Francesca and others of equal stature. They are, however, unknown in America.
His
...Madame de Treymes follows the fortunes of two innocents abroad: Fanny Frisbee of New York, unhappily married to the dissolute Marquis de Malrive, scion of a great house of the Faubourg St. Germain; and John Durham, her childhood friend, who arrives in Paris intent on persuading Fanny to divorce her husband and marry him instead. A scintillating picture of American and French society at the turn of the century, it is also a subtle investigation
...One of the classic works on interior decoration, Edith Wharton's The Decoration of Houses offers a comprehensive look at the history and character of turn-of-the-century interior design. Cowritten with architect Ogden Codman, Jr., this invaluable reference provides us with numerous keen and practical axioms for house design, such as (1) The better the house, the less need for curtains, and (2) the height of a well-proportioned doorway should
...The first of CSA Word's popular women's short story collections
An outstandingly good and very unusual collection – The Sunday Times
This selection of stories relates the many experiences and complexities of womanhood; sometimes joyful, sometimes sad but always enriching. With stories by Edith Wharton, Katherine Mansfield and Elizabeth Gaskell – it includes Ladies in Lavender by William J. Locke,...
The third of CSA Word's popular women's short story collections
CSA Word's collections of 'stories by or about women', narrated by such excellent readers as Rosalind Ayres, Juliet Stevenson and Harriet Walters are consistently fascinating – The Times
Nine unabridged works by time-honoured female and male writers exploring what love, family, and marriage mean. This collection brings together stories by Edith...
17) In Morocco
"To step on board a steamer in a Spanish port, and three hours later to land in a country without a guidebook, is a sensation to rouse the hunger of the most replete sightseer. The sensation is attainable by any one who will take the trouble to row out into the harbor of Algeciras and scramble onto a little black boat headed across the straits."
A classic of travel writing, In Morocco is Edith Wharton's remarkable account of her journey to
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