Bøger af Edith Wharton

With her routine in the quiet village of North Dormer, Charity Royall is becoming bored. Lucius Harney, a visiting architect, makes an unwanted approach to her. Mr. Royall decides not to marry Charity and kicks Lucius out of his home. After leaving the city, Lucius moves to a nearby village. A Nettleton abandoned home is where Charity and Lucius, two lovers, first meet. Charity experiences panic after spotting Lucius at a social gathering with Annabel Balch, a member of the local society. Charity suffers verbal abuse from Mr. Royall, which makes her feel extremely ashamed and drives her to fall into Lucius' arms. Despite committing to marry Charity, Lucius takes a leave of absence to relocate.Charity notices the poverty that has affected the locals as she and her family are vacationing at the Mountain. She promises that she will take all necessary steps to prevent her child from growing up in poverty. She goes back home intending to support her kid by becoming a prostitute. She runs across Mr. Royall again along the road, and they decide to get married.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edith Wharton delivers a stunning, poignant tale that skillfully explores the psychological and cultural influences on human behavior during the early years of World War I. The profoundly moving story follows the shattered lives of distraught parents left behind as their son enlists to fulfill his military duty. Expatriate American painter John Campton battles to keep his only son, George, away from the front while considering the moral implications of his actions. Inspired by her volunteer work in France during World War I, Edith Wharton's remarkable war novel, originally published in 1922, presents an evocative portrait of sorrow and grief and remains a powerful exploration of parental and filial love and tragedy.

Edith Wharton's superb satirical novel of the Jazz Age, a critically praised best-seller when it was first published. Sex, drugs, work, money, infatuation with the occult and spiritual healing-these are the remarkably modern themes that animate Twilight Sleep. The extended family of Mrs. Manford is determined to escape the pain, boredom and emptiness of life through whatever form of 'twilight sleep' they can devise or procure. And though the characters and their actions may seem more in keeping with today's society, this is still a classic Wharton tale of the upper crust and its undoing-wittily, masterfully told.

The Age of Innocence, which was set in the time of Wharton's childhood, was a softer and gentler work than The House of Mirth, which Wharton had published in 1905. In her autobiography, Wharton wrote of The Age of Innocence that it had allowed her to find "a momentary escape in going back to my childish memories of a long-vanished America... it was growing more and more evident that the world I had grown up in and been formed by had been destroyed in 1914." Scholars and readers alike agree that The Age of Innocence is fundamentally a story which struggles to reconcile the old with the new. The title is an ironic comment on the polished outward manners of New York society when compared to its inward machinations. It is believed to have been drawn from the popular painting A Little Girl by Sir Joshua Reynolds that later became known as The Age of Innocence and was widely reproduced as the commercial face of childhood in the later half of the 18th century.

When Lady Jane Lynke unexpectedly inherits Bells, a beautiful country estate, she declares she'll never leave the peaceful grounds and sets about making the house her home. But she hasn't reckoned on the obstinate Mr Jones, the caretaker she's told dislikes her changes, yet never seems able to be found.

Trapped in a loveless marriage and weighed down by poverty, Ethan Frome's days are enlivened by the presence of Mattie, his ailing wife Zeena's youthful and charming cousin, who provides help to the household. When Zeena realizes that her husband's feelings for Mattie go beyond simple affection, and that they seem to be reciprocated, the scene is set for a confrontation that will lead to heartbreak, misery and tragedy.A marked contrast to the mordantly satirical novels of manners set among New York high society for which she is best known, this story set in rural Massachusetts is considered by many to be Edith Wharton's highest achievement, and is unsurpassed as a study of forbidden love and thwarted desire.