Edith Wharton
14 Great Novels
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Publisher Description
Collected here are 14 novels by Edith Wharton. Wharton was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928 and 1930.
Wharton combined her insider's view of America's privileged classes with a brilliant, natural wit to write humorous, incisive novels and short stories of social and psychological insight. She was well acquainted with many of her era's other literary and public figures, including Theodore Roosevelt.
Novels included:
• The Touchstone, 1900
• The Valley of Decision, 1902
• Sanctuary, 1903
• The House of Mirth, 1905
• Madame de Treymes, 1907
• The Fruit of the Tree, 1907
• Ethan Frome, 1911
• The Reef, 1912
• The Custom of the Country, 1913
• Bunner Sisters, 1916
• Summer, 1917
• The Marne, 1918
• The Age of Innocence, 1920 (Pulitzer Prize winner)
• The Glimpses of the Moon, 1922
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
One of America's most beloved novelists, Wharton cut a niche for herself in American letters as the leading chronicler of upper-crust New York society and the purveyor of a style that mixed the respective strengths of American naturalism and the realism of her colleague and mentor, Henry James. In this fascinating collection of Wharton's critical prose, Wegener demonstrates that Wharton was a far better critic than she realized, and one only regrets, after reading these works, that she was not more prolific in that arena. Wegener's introduction to this collection benefits from being scholarly, readable and cogent. As he suggests, Wharton is simply a good critic, which is justification enough to reprint many of these otherwise inaccessible items. Even where one disagrees with Wharton's assessments (she held low opinions of Lawrence and Woolf) and assertions (the lives of the rich make for better novels than those of the poor), her criticisms remain rooted in an appreciation of novel-writing few today can match. Ably aided by Wegener's careful annotations, lovers of Wharton will be pleased by the variety of assembled material: critical essays, literary and theater reviews, tributes and eulogies, prefaces, introductions and forewords to her writings and those of others as well as several unpublished items. This volume is easily recommended to Wharton fans, scholars and scholarly libraries.
