The House of Mirth

Zusatztext With an introduction by Elizabeth Hardwick! Contemporary Reviews! and Letters Between Edith Wharton and Her Publisher "        A frivolous society can acquire dramatic significance only through what its frivolity destroys."--Edith Wharton Lily Bart knows that she must marry--her expensive tastes and mounting debts demand it--and! at twenty-nine! she has every artful wile at her disposal to secure that end. But attached as she is to the social world of her wealthy suitors! something in her rebels against the insipid men whom circumstances compel her to charm.         "Why must a girl pay so dearly for her least escape!" Lily muses as she contemplates the prospect of being bored all afternoon by Percy Grice! dull but undeniably rich! "on the bare chance that he might ulti- mately do her the honor of boring her for life?" Lily is distracted from her prey by the arrival of Lawrence Selden! handsome! quick-witted! and penniless. A runaway bestseller on publication in 1905! The House of Mirth is a brilliant romantic novel of manners! the book that established Edith Wharton as one of America's greatest novelists. "        A tragedy of our modern life! in which the relentlessness of what men used to call Fate and esteem! in their ignorance! a power beyond their control! is as vividly set forth as ever it was by Aeschylus or Shakespeare." --The New York Times Edith Wharton (1862-1937) was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1920 for The Age of Innocence. But it was the publication of The House of Mirth in 1905 that marked Wharton's coming-of-age as a writer. Informationen zum Autor Edith Wharton (1862-1937) was born into high society in New York City. After divorcing her husband in 1913 she took up permanent residence in France. Her many stories and novels were critical successes as well as bestsellers and she won the Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Innocence in 1921. Klappentext Set among the glittering salons of Gilded Age New York, Edith Wharton's most popular novel is a moving indictment of a society whose soul-crushing limitations destroy a woman too spirited to be contained by them. The beautiful, much-desired Lily Bart has been raised to be one of the perfect wives of the wealthy upper class, but her drive and her spark of independent character prevent her from conforming sucessfully. Her desire for a comfortable life means that she will not marry for love without money, but her resistance to the rules of the social elite endangers her many marriage proposals and leads to a dramatic downward spiral into debt and dishonor. One of Edith Wharton's most bracing and nuanced portraits of the life of women in a hostile, highly ordered world, The House of Mirth unfolds with the force of classical tragedy. Chapter One SELDEN PAUSED in surprise. In the afternoon rush of the Grand Central Station his eyes had been refreshed by the sight of Miss Lily Bart. It was a Monday in early September, and he was returning to his work from a hurried dip into the country; but what was Miss Bart doing in town at that season? If she had appeared to be catching a train, he might have inferred that he had come on her in the act of transition between one and another of the country-houses which disputed her presence after the close of the Newport season; but her desultory air perplexed him. She stood apart from the crowd, letting it drift by her to the platform or the street, and wearing an air of irresolution which might, as he surmised, be the mask of a very definite purpose. It struck him at once that she was waiting for some one, but he hardly knew why the idea arrested him. There was nothing new about Lily Bart, yet he could never see her without a faint movement of interest: it was characteristic of her that she always roused speculation, that her simplest acts seemed the result of far-reaching intentions. An impulse of ...

Product details

• Authors: Edith Wharton
• Publisher: Vintage USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 05.06.2012
• EAN: 9780307949523
• ISBN: 978-0-307-94952-3
• No. of pages: 352
• Dimensions: 135 mm x 201 mm x 20 mm
• Series: Vintage Classics; VINTAGE CLASSICS
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature