Authors: Edith Wharton
ISBN-13: 9781420932553, ISBN-10: 1420932551
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Digireads.com
Date Published: January 2009
Edition: (Non-applicable)
One of America's most important novelists, Edith Wharton was a refined, relentless chronicler of the Gilded Age and its social mores. Along with close friend Henry James, she helped define literature at the turn of the 20th century, even as she wrote classic nonfiction on travel, decorating and her own life.
Wharton's glittering satire of the newly affluent in Old New York
Considered by many to be her masterpiece, Edith Wharton's second full-length work is a scathing yet personal examination of the exploits and follies of the modern upper class. As she unfolds the story of Undine Spragg, from New York to Europe, Wharton affords us a detailed glimpse of what might be called the interior décor of this America and its nouveau riche fringes. Through a heroine who is as vain, spoiled, and selfish as she is irresistibly fascinating, and through a most intricate and satisfying plot that follows Undine's marriages and affairs, she conveys a vision of social behavior that is both supremely informed and supremely disenchanted. BACKCOVER: “As long as men and women seek to use each otherand to use each other badlyEdith Wharton can be counted upon to provide the ideal commentary.”
Anita Brookner
Edith Wharton's finest achievement.