Ethan Frome, written in 1911 by Pulitzer Prize-winning American author Edith Wharton, is set in the fictitious town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. Against a backdrop of a cold, grey, bleak New England winter, a visiting engineer staying temporarily in town while working nearby, tells the story of his encounter with Ethan Frome, who is an isolated farmer trying to scrape out a living while tending to his frigid, demanding and ungrateful wife, Zeena....

Twilight Sleep is a novel by American author Edith Wharton and was first published in 1927 as a serial in the Pictorial Review before being published as a novel in the same year. The story, filled with irony, is centered around a socialite family navigating the New York of the Jazz Age and their relationships. This novel landed at number one on the best-selling list just two months after its publication and finished the year at number seven. Even...

Seven short stories from one of the most celebrated authors of the early twentieth century have been updated with an eye toward readability for modern readers. The bones of the stories are just as she told them with no changes to plot or settings. Best of all the book includes the original unedited versions in appendices. The Hermit and the Wild Woman: One escapes from war, the other from a convent, only to find themselves together in their solitude. The...

"Having begun my book with the statement that Morocco still lacks a guide-book, I should have wished to take a first step toward remedying that deficiency. But the conditions in which I travelled, though full of unexpected and picturesque opportunities, were not suited to leisurely study of the places visited. The time was limited by the approach of the rainy season, which puts an end to motoring over the treacherous trails of the Spanish zone. In...

Edith Wharton's satiric anatomy of American society in the first decade of the twentieth century appeared in 1913; it both appalled and fascinated its first reviewers, and established her as a major novelist. The Saturday Review wrote that she had 'assembled as many detestable people as it is possible to pack between the covers of a six-hundred page novel', but concluded that the book was 'brilliantly written', and 'should be read as a parable'. It...

Edith Wharton was one of the most successful authors of the early 20th century. In 1921, she became the first woman to ever receive the Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Age of Innocence. Aside from her literary fiction, Wharton was widely respected as a writer of ghost stories. Collected here are her best tales, including 'The Duchess at Prayer', 'The Triumph of the Night', 'A Journey and many more'.

The novel is set within the context of an unspecified war between England and France and includes several discussions about the nature of warfare, such as the heroism demonstrated by soldiers during battle, for example during "the great fighting of Marne.

Xingu is a short story about a woman's luncheon club devised as a means of keeping its members up to date with the latest goings on in the world. After the glamorous novelist Osric Dane stuns the other women with her bored disposition and blunt questions, the conversation is left stale – that is, until the previously quiet Mrs. Roby mentions the topic of Xingu. Thought mad by the rest of her peers, Mrs. Roby is suddenly engaged by a nowinquisitive...

A trailblazer among American women at the turn of the century, Edith Wharton set out in the newly invented "motor-car" to explore the cities and countryside of France. As the Whartons embark on three separate journeys through the country in 1906 and 1907, accompanied first by Edith's brother, Harry Jones, and then by Henry James, Edith is enamored by the freedom that this new form of transport has given her. With a keen eye for architecture and art,...

What begins as an ordinary event quickly shifts into the bizarre after the narrator, a wealthy bachelor, meets their friend, Lanvivain, at an old mansion. Thinking about purchasing the property, the narrator and Lanvivain explore the mansion at Kerfol, attracted to the vast and ordinate property. Lanvivain enthusiastically urges the bachelor to buy the property, declaring that it matches his personality exactly. The narrator, however, is unconvinced,...