One of the major figures in American literary history, Edith Wharton (1862-1937) presented intriguing insights into the American experience. Author of more than 40 volumes--novels, short stories, poetry, non-fiction--Wharton had a long and remarkable life. She was born during the Civil War, encouraged in her childhood literary endeavors by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and devoted to such varied friends as Henry James and Theodore Roosevelt. Recipient of the French Legion of Honor for her philanthropic work during World War I and of the Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Age of Innocence (1920), in 1923 she became the first woman to receive an honorary doctorate from Yale.

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton, Anita Shreve (Introduction). Set against the bleak winter landscape of New England, Ethan Frome is the story of a poor farmer, lonely and downtrodden, his wife Zeena, and her cousin, the enchanting Mattie Silver. In the playing out of this short novel's powerful and engrossing drama, Edith Wharton constructed her least characteristic and most celebrated book. In her Introduction, the distinguished critic Elaine Showalter discusses the background to the novel's composition and the reasons for its enduring success.

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, Anna Quindlen (Introduction). "The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth," warns Ecclesiastes 7:4, and so does the novel by Edith Wharton that takes its title from this call to heed. New York at the turn of the century was a time of opulence and frivolity for those who could afford it. But for those who couldn't and yet wanted desperately to keep up with the whirlwind, like Wharton's charming Lily Bart, it was something else altogether: a gilded cage rather than the Gilded Age.

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, Louis Auchincloss (Introduction). Newland Archer saw little to envy in the marriages of his friends, yet he prided himself that in May Welland he had found the companion of his needs--tender and impressionable, with equal purity of mind and manners. The engagement was announced discreetly, but all of New York society was soon privy to this most perfect match, a union of families and circumstances cemented by affection. Enter Countess Olenska, a woman of quick wit sharpened by experience, not afraid to flout convention and determined to find freedom in divorce.

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