Böcker av Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton was one of the first woman writers to be allowed to visit the war zones in France. This resulting collection of 6 essays presents a fascinating and unique perspective on wartime France by one of America's great novelists.

'He seemed a part of the mute melancholy landscape, an incarnation of its frozen woe, with all that was warm and sentient in him fast bound below the surface'Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious and hypochondriac wife, Zeena. But when Zeena's vivacious cousin enters their household as a 'hired girl', Ethan finds himself obsessed with her and with the possibilities for happiness she comes to represent. In one of American fiction's finest and most intense narratives, Edith Wharton moves this ill-starred trio towards their tragic destinies.The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

DramaCharacters: 5 male, 5 female Unit set. Based on the classic story that helped to establish Edith Wharton as the first great American woman novelist, this moving play vividly brings to the stage Lily Bart's flamboyant progress through the glorious whirl of New York's high society, circa 1905, and her tragic fall. The satirical love story is staged as a series of flashbacks over her coffin. Faithful to Edith Wharton's distinct style of dialogue, this dramatic version open

Charity Royall yearns to escape her dull existence in the New England backwater where she lives with her guardian. When her sexual nature is awakened, darker undercurrents in the community threaten her future happiness. The 'hot' counterpart to Ethan Frome, and equally memorable, Summer was regarded by Wharton as one of her best works.

Lily Bart has no fortune, but she possesses everything else she needs to make an excellent marriage: beauty, intelligence, a love of luxury and an elegant skill in negotiating the hidden traps and false friends of New York's high society. But time and again Lily cannot bring herself to make the final decisive move.

Since its publication in 1905 The House of Mirth has commanded attention for the sharpness of Wharton's observations and the power of her style. Its heroine, Lily Bart, is beautiful, poor, and unmarried at 29. In her search for a husband with money and position she betrays her own heart and sows the seeds of the tragedy that finally overwhelms her. The House of Mirth is a lucid, disturbing analysis of the stifling limitations imposed upon women of Wharton's generation. Herself born into Old New York Society, Wharton watched as an entirely new set of people living by new codes of conduct entered the metropolitan scene. In telling the story of Lily Bart, who must marry to survive, Wharton recasts the age-old themes of family, marriage, and money in ways that transform the traditional novel of manners into an arresting moderndocument of cultural anthropology.

Set against the bleak winter landscape of New England, Ethan Frome tells the story of a poor farmer, lonely and downtrodden, his wife Zenia, and her cousin, the enchanting Mattie Silver. In her introduction the distinguished critic Elaine Showalter discusses the background to the novel's composition and the reasons for its enduring success.

Word count 24,820 CD: American English

Compelling, rich and strange, the ghost stories of Edith Wharton, like vintage wine, have matured and grown more potent with the passing years.

Edith Wharton's satiric anatomy of American society in the first decade of the twentieth century both appalled and fascinated its first reviewers. It follows the career of Undine Spragg, as she pursues her schemes and social ambitions in a world of shifting values, where triumph is swiftly followed by disillusion.

'We can't behave like people in novels, though, can we?'Newland Archer and May Welland are the perfect couple. He is a wealthy young lawyer and she is a lovely and sweet-natured girl. All seems set for success until the arrival of May's unconventional cousin Ellen Olenska, who returns from Europe without her husband and proceeds to shake up polite New York society. To Newland, she is a breath of fresh air and a free spirit, but the bond that develops between them throws his values into confusion and threatens his relationship with May.VINTAGE DECO: Nine blazing, daring novels to celebrate the 1920s - 100 years on.

Word count 10,700 CD: American English

Edith Wharton's most famous novel, written immediately after the end of the First World War, is a brilliantly realized anatomy of New York society in the 1870s. The charming Newland Archer is content to live within its constraints until he meets Ellen Olenska, whose arrival threatens his impending marriage as well as his comfortable future.

Novel by Pulitzer prize winning author of THE AGE OF INNOCENCE

Rich and strange, these stories reveal a seductive and little-known aspect of this superb writer.

*With an afterword by Marilyn French*Companion volume to HUDSON RIVER BRACKETED

A powerful study of class, of morality and of love.

Presents a tale about a beautiful social climber, Undine Sprague, who is a monster of selfishness and honestly doesn't know it. 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.

* A bestseller when it was first published in 1928, THE CHILDREN is a touching, bittersweet novel about a middle-aged man's relationship with a band of unruly children - and of his conflicting feelings for the eldest, a girl on the cusp of womanhood.

The return of the beautiful Countess Olenska into the rigidly conventional society of New York sends reverberations throughout the upper reaches of society. Newland Archer, an eligible young man of the establishment is about to announce his engagement to May Welland, a pretty ing nue, when May's cousin, Countess Olenska, is introduced into their circle. The Countess brings with her an aura of European sophistication and a hint of scandal, having left her husband and claimed her independence. Her sorrowful eyes, her tragic worldliness and her air of unapproachability attract the sensitive Newland and, almost against their will, a passionate bond develops between them. But Archer's life has no place for passion and, with society on the side of May and all she stands for, he finds himself drawn into a bitter conflict between love and duty.

Edith Wharton's novel reworks the eternal triangle of two women and a man in a strikingly original manner. The consequent drama, set in New York during the 1870s, reveals terrifying chasms under the polished surface of upper-class society as the increasingly fraught Archer struggles with conflicting obligations and desires.