Kindle
$0.94
Available instantly
Audible Logo Audiobook
$0.00
with membership trial
Hardcover
$13.83
Paperback
$9.99
Buy used:
$9.99
Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime
FREE delivery Saturday, May 18 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35
Or fastest delivery Thursday, May 16. Order within 20 hrs 56 mins
Used: Acceptable | Details
Sold by -OnTimeBooks-
Fulfilled by Amazon
Condition: Used: Acceptable
Comment: Shipped fast and reliably through the Amazon Prime program! Book may contain some writing, highlighting, and or cover damage.

Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is a service we offer sellers that lets them store their products in Amazon's fulfillment centers, and we directly pack, ship, and provide customer service for these products. Something we hope you'll especially enjoy: FBA items qualify for FREE Shipping and Amazon Prime.

If you're a seller, Fulfillment by Amazon can help you grow your business. Learn more about the program.

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Summer Paperback – January 1, 1993

by Edith Wharton (Author), Candace Waid (Introduction)
3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 452 ratings
See all formats and editions
In 1917, when Edith Wharton published Summer, she was living in a France “steeped in the tragic realities of war.” Yet she set this book far away from Paris and explored her most daring theme—a woman’s awakening to her sexual needs. 

Eighteen-year-old Charity Royall, is bored in the small Massachusetts town of North Dormer and ignorant of desire until she meets a visiting architect, Lucius Harney. Like the lush summer of Berkshires around them, their romance is shimmering and idyllic, but its consequences are harsh and real. And the book, for its early twentieth-century audience, was shocking.

Wharton’s pellucid prose, her raw depiction of the mountain community where Charity was born, and Charity’s rites of passage into adulthood elevate Summer into a groundbreaking study of society, nature, and human needs. Joseph Conrad prized this gem of a novel and Wharton also favored it. Now the modern reader can experience the most erotic fiction Edith Wharton ever wrote. This anniversary edition also contains an introduction by notable Wharton scholar Candace Waid.
Read more Read less
Previous page
  1. Print length
    216 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Signet
  4. Publication date
    January 1, 1993
  5. Dimensions
    4.25 x 0.5 x 7 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0451525663
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0451525666
  8. See all details
Next page
The Amazon Book Review
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

The upper stratum of New York society into which Edith Wharton was born in 1862 provided her with an abundance of material as a novelist but did not encourage her growth as an artist. Educated by tutors and governesses, she was raised for only one career: marriage. But her marriage, in 1885, to Edward Wharton was an emotional disappointment, if not a disaster. She suffered the first of a series of nervous breakdowns in 1894. In spite of the strain of her marriage, or perhaps because of it, she began to write fiction and published her first story in 1889.Her first published book was a guide to interior decorating, but this was followed by several novels and story collections. They were written while the Whartons lived in Newport and New York, traveled in Europe, and built their grand home, the Mount, in Lenox, Massachusetts. In Europe, she met Henry James, who became her good friend, traveling companion, and the sternest but most careful critic of her fiction. The House of Mirth (1905) was both a resounding critical success and a bestseller, as was Ethan Frome (1911). In 1913 the Whartons were divorced, and Edith took up permanent residence in France. Her subject, however, remained America, especially the moneyed New York of her youth. Her great satiric novel, The Custom of the Country was published in 1913 and The Age of Innocence won her the Pulitzer Prize in 1921.In her later years, she enjoyed the admiration of a new generation of writers, including Sinclair Lewis and F. Scott Fitzgerald. In all, she wrote some 30 books, including an autobiography, A Backward Glance (1934). She died at her villa near Paris in 1937.

Candace Waid, PhD, is professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Some of Professor Waid’s central interests include American literature and culture, African American literature, and Southern literature. Professor Waid’s books include Edith Wharton's Letters from the Underworld: Fictions of Women and Writing and The Signifying Eye: Seeing Faulkner’s Art.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Signet; 1st ptg. edition (January 1, 1993)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 216 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0451525663
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0451525666
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 4.8 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.25 x 0.5 x 7 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 452 ratings

Customer reviews

3.9 out of 5 stars
3.9 out of 5
452 global ratings
Bogus
1 Star
Bogus
The text makes no sense. It is as if someone had used the thesaurus to replace every other word.The attached screen shot shows the first page plus the results of a text search showing several different places where "c programming language" has been inserted.
Hide
Thank you for your feedback
Sorry, there was an error
Sorry we couldn't load the review

Top reviews from the United States

Reena Ben-Ephraim
5.0 out of 5 stars A Major Writer
Reviewed in the United States on September 20, 2013
Verified Purchase
Reading Edith Wharton is a deep pleasure and a privilege. "Summer" reminds one of her powers to perceive both the outer and inner world in all their richness and complexity, and to recreate them in her perfectly chosen words and rhythms.She is also a natural storyteller, weaving her spell and drawing us in: unveiling her struggling, imperfect characters in all their passion and humanity, while placing them in a poetic/realistic world which is exquisitely and convincingly rendered.Both Charity Royall and Lawyer Royall are deeply realized people, each caught in the web of his history and character, while life--and the passing wind of Lucius Harney-- shows them its
strength and bends them to what is meant to be. It is a magnificent and brave book, sexually unbridled, morally sophisticated, comprehending and empathetic. And can this woman write! I am so glad to have found it through Kindle.
5 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Carlotta Anderson
4.0 out of 5 stars Edith Wharton's "hot Ethan Frome"
Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2010
Verified Purchase
As in Ethan Frome, the protagonist--in this case, a young woman--is naive, uneducated, unsophisticated and can easily be taken advantage of. A visiting architectural researcher is attracted to her, and they embark on a sweet romance. He neglects to tell her that he is already engaged to another woman in town and when the implications of this catch up with him, he becomes dubious about what action he should take and goes away "for awhile." She, having learned the truth, urges him to keep his word and marry his fiancee although she finds she is pregnant. The book is lovely in its earlier parts but ends sadly, and for some it may be a downer. I thought it was very poignant.
3 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
James C. Casterline
3.0 out of 5 stars A short work: quick to read, hard to understand
Reviewed in the United States on October 25, 2014
Verified Purchase
I get the impression that academics and critics place great value on this short work of this famous author. I read her books as I eat my vegetables because I believe both are good for me. I am not the ideal reader as I am a man who slipped from middle to old age some years ago. This book gives a view of a brief period of time and focuses on people who didn't particularly interest me. In reading about this book, I gather that true Wharton scholars are impressed yet puzzled by her ultimate purpose in this book. I am not sure it excuses my confusion.
8 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
BooksAndStuff
5.0 out of 5 stars What a surprise! What an ending!
Reviewed in the United States on August 12, 2011
Verified Purchase
[Note: do not read the spoiler review by "George & Georgia Eliot" on this site before you read the book (I'm glad I didn't) since the reviewer reveals the plot line even in the title of the review. Hey, thanks a lot. Don't you know you're supposed to put "spoiler alert" on things like that?] As for SUMMER itself, it was a delightful surprise from Wharton. One of the few books in which she actually admits that her characters have sex (oh, my) and actually does it tastefully and in strict accordance with the characters' natures and the plot itself. The ending was a stunning surprise, and this from a huge Wharton fan, who found this book accidentally for the Kindle. Thank you, those who made this book available for free, but I would've paid to read this one. SUMMER is one of the best books Wharton ever wrote. Thumbs up on character development, irony, plot, dialogue, etc. Great read. 5*
35 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Stephen O. Murray
4.0 out of 5 stars A butterfly on the wheel
Reviewed in the United States on July 5, 2002
Verified Purchase
Like _House of Mirth, Edith Wharton's 1917 short novel _Summer _ shows a relatively aware young woman being ground up by social convention. Wharton is so linked with Henry James that no one seems to have noticed the extent to which she was a late naturalist, chronicled inexorable destruction. An argument could be made that Charity is rescued from her hereditary fate up in the mountains (the Berkshires) and that the prime upholder of convention takes pity on her plight, but _Summer_ is close to _Ethan Frome_ in more than a New England location. More pragmatic than some of those confronted with destruction in other Wharton works, Charity makes the best of her very limited options, but happiness is more fleeting than a New England summer is.
The lack of female solidarity in _Summer_ is especially striking. Lily Bart had one devoted female friend. Charity has none, and the professional woman she turns to is far and away the most vicious character in the book.
Most of the book is about the blooming of a love crossing social boundaries that I find tedious. Others, including, I think Wharton herself, enjoyed chronicling Charity's first experience of love with an out-of-towner whose life and commitments are elsewhere, but for me it is the portrait of small-town busybodies and the eventual narrow corner into which Charity paints herself (with the help of social hypocrisy and her lack of education or any marketable skills ) that are interesting.
Susan Minot's introduction is helpful in placing the book within the course of Edith Wharton's life. A particularly important continuity across Wharton's work Minot observes is that "Wharton's heroines are not hapless victims; they understand their helplessness." I am not convinced that this enables them to keep their dignity, but the awareness of their plight and the unreasonability of social judgments heightens the tragedies (in contrast to Stephen Crane's _Maggie_ to take one example).
21 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Barry J. Wythoff
5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful anachronism
Reviewed in the United States on April 7, 2005
Verified Purchase
This book, dealing rather heavily on youth, sexuality and betrayal, might seem out of date to today's blase' teens, growing up in a world where over-the-top sexuality comes oozing out of every pore of the omnipresent media, and many of them have not only seen it all, but done it all.

However, it is beautifully and sensitively written, and one can well imagine that in its time (World War I era), it was not considered appropriate reading for the young (or old) of the gentrified class of which Wharton herself was so well known a member.

The naivete' of it's protagonist brings about an unhappy and bitter lesson in the machiavellian nature of men when pursuing sexual pleasure - I must say that although there were dark foreshadowings, I was surprised that things turned out quite as harshly as they did, given the historical and social context of Miss Wharton's work. Finally, the "resolution" at its conclusion is neither neat nor complete.

Quite a story for the genteel Miss Wharton and highly recommended.
12 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English
Anjali V Raj
5.0 out of 5 stars Simple story
Reviewed in India on May 31, 2023
Verified Purchase
This is a simple yet thought provoking story. Just 100 pages and hence can finish in a day or two. This Kindle edition is good.
Report
Amazon Kunde
5.0 out of 5 stars Wunderschön geschrieben
Reviewed in Germany on March 3, 2021
Verified Purchase
Ich liebe dieses Buch !!! Der Schreibstyl von Edith Wharton ist unglaublich schön. Sie hat eine Kunst die Landschaft/Umgebung zu beschreiben, dass man glaubt, man wäre selbst schon da gewesen.
Habe schon das nächste bestellt.
Report
Dyane Taylor
5.0 out of 5 stars Quick delivery
Reviewed in Canada on September 13, 2018
Verified Purchase
Good
One person found this helpful
 Report
Emma Danks
1.0 out of 5 stars don't buy
Reviewed in Australia on December 16, 2019
Verified Purchase
this is a very bad edition of wharton's work, almost as if it were run through google translate with random words scattered about nonsensicaly
Report
Josephine
5.0 out of 5 stars Edith Wharton's rural mode
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 5, 2014
Verified Purchase
I am still listening to this CD, and reading the book at the same time. I like the reader, Lorna Raver, very much. The atmosphere reminds me of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, although there's no similarity in the characters, so the book transports me back to those days when most young girls' literature came from North America ('Girl of the Limberlost', the Anne books, etc.)
The heroine, the fierce Charity Royall, is in the tradition even if she hasn't read very much. For this is the story of a Librarian in a one-horse town who doesn't know her books, except for 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' and Longfellow, which are the only ones anyone asks for.
Anyone, that is, except a fresh good-looking young man who has come to North Dormer from the city. "Have you a card catalogue?" he asks. A WHAT ? she retorts.
There are some amusing moments, but one feels it is building up to a certain amount of turmoil, and it would be marvellous to listen to this while driving on a long, lonely journey.
I haven't seen the ending, but am very engaged by the way the story is shaping
3 people found this helpful
 Report