Showing results by author "Edith Wharton" in All Categories

Having been born into a life of wealth and privilege, Edith Wharton was part of the small clique of aristocratic families that held sway over New York City's social and cultural life at the turn of the nineteenth century. In The Age of Innocence, Wharton looks back fondly on the life that was enjoyed by the privileged class of the East Coast before the many changes wrought by World War I.

Beneath the brilliance that was behind The Age of Innocence and Ethan Frome was a dark side. A dark side which produced magnificent tales of the unseen influences in our lives, such as "Mr. Jones", "The Eyes", "Kerfol", "The Ladie's Maid's Bell", and "The Looking Glass".

Winter in a Massachusetts village serves as a backdrop to Edith Wharton's masterpiece about a man with little hope of escaping his bleak future. Married to an older woman named Zeena, Ethan Frome finds himself drawn to his wife's cousin, Mattie.

Set in the 1920s, The 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 devise a shrewd bargain: they'll marry and spend a year or so sponging off their wealthy friends, honeymooning in their mansions and villas.

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.

The House of Mirth is a novel of manners set against the backdrop of the 1890s New York ruling class. Wharton places her tragic heroine, Lily Bart, in a society that she describes as a ‘hot-house of traditions and conventions.'

Summer details the sexual awakening of Charity Royall, who lives unhappily with her hard-drinking adoptive father in an isolated New England village. Lucius Harney, a visiting architect, awakens her sexual passion and her hope for escape. Exploring Charity's relation to her father and her lover, Edith Wharton delves into dark cultural territory: repressed sexuality, small-town prejudice, and, in subtle hints, incest.

Twilight Sleep, a gothic satire of Jazz Age New York, was an instant best-seller when it was released in 1927. Quintessential Edith Wharton, it is stylish and sharp, at turns scathing, hilarious and melodramatic, but also deeply and surprisingly human. In a modernist twist, the story is told by three distinct narrators—19-year-old Nona Manford, her unflappable socialite mother Pauline, and Nona’s father and Pauline’s second husband, divorce lawyer Dexter Manford. All are trying to save the marriage of Nona’s half-brother, Jim Wyant, and his wife Lita.

Selected Shorts: A Celebration of the Short Story has toured to the Mount, the stately and elegant home of the great American writer Edith Wharton, for the last several summers, presenting Broadway and Hollywood actors reading stories by Wharton and other writers. Selected Shorts now presents a collection of four of Edith Wharton's short stories, recorded live at the Mount, and featuring acclaimed actresses Kathleen Chalfant, Christina Pickles, Maria Tucci, and Brenda Wehle.

Wharton's grace with the language and her understanding of the human condition are beautifully presented in these stories that range from a mother's love for her son to a ghostly visitation. The stories included in this collection are "Sanctuary", "Afterward", "The Angel at the Grave", and "Souls Belated".

The novel is about New York City society in its best years through the life of a beautiful girl who is an outside insider with a foot in and several feet outside the inner circle.

This collection brings together stories by Edith Wharton, Katherine Mansfield, Wilkie Collins and Marcel Proust, with forays into the supernatural and the comedic by Sabine Baring-Gould and Saki. Be them funny or moving, all stories are beautifully read by Harriet Walter (Atonement, Netflix’s The Crown), Juliet Stevenson (Bend it Like Beckham, The Enfield Haunting), Barbara Leigh-Hunt (Pride and Prejudice, Billy Elliot) and Rosalind Ayres (Titanic, Outnumbered). 

A bumper collection of classic ghost stories and strange supernatural tales.

Newland Archer is about to announce his engagement to the docile May Welland when he meets her cousin, the mysterious, nonconformist Countess Ellen Olenska. Edith Wharton's elegant portrait of desire and betrayal in Old New York earned her the first Pulitzer Prize for literature ever awarded to a woman.

Newland Archer is a young lawyer, a member of New York's high society, and engaged to be married to May Welland. Countess Ellen Olenska is May's cousin, and wants a divorce from the Polish nobleman she married. Intelligent and beautiful, she comes back to New York where she tries to fit into the high society life she had before her marriage. Her family and former friends, however, are shocked by the idea of divorce within their social circle, and she finds herself snubbed by her own class.

Probably the most famous of Edith Wharton's novels, Ethan Frome contrasts sharply with her usual ironic contemplation of the fashionable New York society to which she herself belonged and whose strengths and weaknesses she understood so well. Ethan Frome is a keenly-etched portrait of the simple inhabitants of a 19th-century New England village.

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. Co-written 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 be twice its width.

Multi award-winning narrator Carrington MacDuffie brings her signature depth and wit to this delightful collection of Edith Wharton’s New York Stories: Volume II.

A thrilling volume of short stories featuring great storytellers such as O.Henry, Edith Wharton and M.R. James to keep you on the edge of you seat.

In Hudson River Bracketed, Edith Wharton illuminates the creative process of writing. Vance Weston, a young Midwesterner yearning to be a writer, travels to New York in pursuit of his dreams. On the Hudson River, in an old house called The Willows, he meets a kindred spirit. Halo Spear is the privileged daughter of an old New York family, a lover of poetry and literature who educates and inspires him as he hones his craft.