Edith Wharton: 443 books

Originally published in 1899, The Greater Inclination was Wharton's first collection and comprised seven short stories and a play in two parts. Most of the pieces had been previously published in magazines, with one, The Portrait, composed specifically for the book to replace another that Wharton thought...

Originally published in 1915, Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belport is a collection of Wharton's war journalism that initially appeared singularly in Scribners Magazine. A committed Francophile, Wharton had moved to France on the break-up of her marriage and when the war came she did what she could...

'Can't you see that I don't care what anybody says?' Charity Royall lives in the small New England village of North Dormer. Born among outcasts from the Mountain beyond, she is rescued by lawyer Royall and lives with him as his ward. Never allowed to forget her disreputable origins Charity despises...

Originally published in 1925, The Mother's Recompense details the predicament Kate Clephane finds herself in when recalled to New York from her self-imposed exile to the French Riviera after she had abandoned her husband and infant daughter. What makes her return is the impending marriage of that same...

Originally published in 1932, The Gods Arrive is the sequel to Hudson River Bracketed and continues the development of Lance Weston and his relationship with Halo Spear who, it transpires, has left her husband to live with Lance. Where the first novel dwelt at length with Lance's aspirations and growth...

A bestseller when it was originally published nearly a century ago, Wharton's first literary success was set amid the previously unexplored territory of fashionable, turn-of-the-century New York society, an area with which she was intimately familiar.The tragic love story reveals the destructive effects...

Winner of the 1921 Pulitzer Prize, The Age of Innocence is an elegant, masterful portrait of desire and betrayal in old New York. With vivid power, Wharton evokes a time of gaslit streets, formal dances held in the ballrooms of stately brownstones, and society people "who dreaded scandal more...

Originally published in 1907, The Fruit of the Tree is a conventionally structured novel hinging upon a love triangle with the principle male character, John Amherst providing the hinge between two different female leads, Bessy Langhope, a mill owner, and Justine Brent, a nurse. Wharton's treatment of...

The Age of Innocence centers on one society couple's impending marriage and the introduction of a scandalous woman whose presence threatens their happiness. Though the novel questions the assumptions and mores of turn of the century New York society, it never devolves into an outright condemnation...

HarperCollins is proud to present a range of best-loved, essential classics. 'I want – I want somehow to get away with you into a world where words like that – categories like that – won't exist. Where we shall be simply two human beings who love each other, who are the whole of life to each...

Originally published in 1913, The Custom of the Country is a full length novel about the incessant rise of Undine Spragg, an attractive, vivacious woman of the American Mid-West who is fuelled by ambition, and greed, combined with an all too obvious disregard for the feelings of anyone else except herself....

The House of Mirth is a novel about New York socialite Lily Bart attempting to secure a husband and a place in rich society. It is one of the first novels about manners in American literature, and one of the first to openly explore how American Victorian society offered little social mobility for...

Like most Wharton novels, The House of Mirth examines the conflict between rigid social expectation and personal desire. Lily Bart is adept at playing society's games, which expect her to achieve an advantageous marriage. Yet, torn between her desire for luxurious living and a relationship based on...

Set in rural New England, "Ethan Frome" is the story of its title character who marries Zenobia, a nagging hypochondriac of a woman, and finds himself trapped in an unfulfilling life. When Zenobia's young cousin Mattie Silver comes to live with them, Frome falls in love with her. "Ethan Frome" is the...