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 ...
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...
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 a...
This is Edith Wharton’s earliest published collection of 8 short stories (1899). A selection consists: „Muse’s 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 P...
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, co...
„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 Lady’s Maid’s Bell,” „The Mission of Jane,” „The Reckoning,” „The Letter,” „The Dilettante,” „The Quicksand,” and „A Venetian Night’s Entertainment”. Wharton dissecting some of the customs, habits and vagaries of courtship and marriage, particularly as prac...
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 society’s willingness to overlook such transgressions, nevertheless marries him. Years later, her son faces a moral crisis similar to the one that showed her his father’s moral weakness. With the precision, beauty, and sharp awareness of the cracks in up...
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 Father’s Son”, „The Daunt Diana”, „The ...
Edith Wharton’s 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 ...
Considered by some to be her finest work, Edith Wharton’s „Summer” created a sensation when first published in 1917, as it was one of the first novels to deal honestly with a young woman’s 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 ch...
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 Wharton’s 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 in...
One of Edith Wharton’s 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 May’s beautiful and unconventional cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska who returns to New York after a...
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...
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 Zeena’s young and beautiful cousin Mattie Silver enters their househo...
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 ...
A humorous account of a trip to London and brief sojourn in that city and its vicinity. It includes: „A Ticket to Europe”, „Crossing the Atlantic”, „In England–Now! „, „Mayfair in the Fair Month of May”, „A Hostess at Home”, „The Light on Burns’s Brow”, „Certain Social Uncertainties”, „A Sentimental Journey”, „All in a Garden Fair”, „I Went and Ranged about to Many Churches”, „Piccadilly Circus and its Environs”, „The Game of Going On”, „A French Week-End”. Carolyn Wells (1...
A collection of short sketches by the prolific American author which was first published in 1913. Carolyn Wells was an early 20th century poet and author best known for mysteries like „The Gold Bag” and „Fleming Stone Detective Stories”. During the first ten years of her career, she concentrated on poetry, humor, and children’s books. After 1910, she devoted herself to the mystery genre. The book contains: „At the lost-and-found desk”, „Tootie at the bank”, „The dressmaker ...
In this dense novel, the house in which the Darke family exists apparently has its own impassive but claustrophobic influence on the family, which, in turn, tied itself up too quickly in its network of special hate agreements and connections. Jasper fights against his religion, Ruby is trapped between her need for conventions and her own desires, and Peter is forced to rebel.
”Seven For A Secret” is the story of a young girl who turns into a compassionate, passionate, loving woman, who is visible through the eyes of a shepherd poet who loves her. Gillian is nineteen when the romance opens, and she is a romantic star who wants to flirt with men to fall in love with her. Gillian, in many ways, still behaves like a child, and she is selfish, narcissistic, and stupid with others in her life. A kind and simple shepherd named Robert, working with her ...
This is an exciting collection of 15 stories. Indeed, there are some who are very good – there is a sad and exciting „Silly old fool” about a canon who believes that a woman cares for him, and „Engraving” sees how an obsessed husband goes against his wife’s desires, collecting engravings. Other great stories are Little Donkeys with Raspberry Saddles, gentle Chinese Horses about two women and a man, and Major Wilbraham sees a World War I major go crazy. This is a wide genre ...
Despite the severity of the life he encounters, like a little rat, Douglas Gordon, with good mood and good fortune, with calm courage, pushes his way through difficulties. And this is followed by a fairy tale full of sea fool, the enchanting beauty of the islands in the Gulf of Georgia, the color of the promenade: a boy, a girl and a dog in a human adventure on the wild sea coast life near Vancouver.
A magnificent classic tale of family life at a former age. The wooden horse is the story of the Trojans, a family that calmly accepted the belief that they were people for whom the world was created. But when Harry Troyan returned home twenty years later in New Zealand, with the democracy that he learned by working with his hands, he was a „wooden horse” who boldly carried an army of alien ideals into the walls of Troyan, which made a group of people out of this selfish fam...
The story – the mother-in-law – the situation of the daughter-in-law, growing hatred, as motherhood possessions find disappointment. The final break looks like anti-climax. In the story, the story is reminiscent of „The Daughter of Mr. Despondency” by Anna Parrish, although Walpole dealt with his material more confidently, with great skill.
