Edith Wharton

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. 'Do you remember what you said to me once? That you could help me only by loving me? Well-you did love me for a moment; and it helped me. It has always helped me.' Lily Bart, an attractive young woman living in New York City, relies on beauty and charm to ensure economic survival. Determined to marry into wealth to support her expensive lifestyle, Lily denies...

Edith Wharton was an American novelist, poet and short story writer whose works display her mastery over the realistic fiction genre. In 1922, two years after winning the Pulitzer Prize for "The Age of Innocence", Wharton wrote "The Glimpses of the Moon". The novel centered around two young newlyweds, who arranged their marriage in order to take advantage of their wealthy friends' generosity. However, things do not end quite as they planned when they...

Edith Wharton's A Son at the Front (1923) is a stirring rumination of family, art, and the shortcomings of possession. The story, which is set on the eve of the First World War reflects the author's own experience living in France when the "Great War" broke out. The delineation of Wartime Paris is one of great power and evocation, yet it is the immensely personal father-son relationship that is at the heart of this tragic novel. The novel begins in...

Bunner Sisters, written in 1892 but not published until 1916 in Xingu and Other Stories, takes place in a shabby neighborhood in New York City. The two Bunner sisters, Ann Eliza the elder, and Evelina the younger, keep a small shop selling artificial flowers and small handsewn articles to Stuyvesant Square's "female population." Ann Eliza gives Evelina a clock for her birthday. The clock leads the sisters to become involved with Herbert Ramy, owner...

Thousands of books on interior design have come and gone since the 1897 publication of this pioneering manual, but The Decoration of Houses remains, thanks to the insightful and inspiring advice of its co-authors. Before she became the Pulitzer Prize—winning author of “The Age of Innocence”, Edith Wharton was a society matron, remodeling a summer home in Newport, Rhode Island. With the able assistance of architect Ogden Codman, Jr., Wharton...

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...

The great American novelist Edith Wharton (1862-1937) here gives us her colorful and textured travel memoir "In Morroco" (1920). Still a deeply energized work, Wharton imbues the reader with a sense of wonder that served as the impetus for her travels into this exotic Northern African land. Edith Wharton made her name as a novelist closely associated with the prolific Henry James. Their personal and literary kinship may be seen in much of her long...

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...

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,...

Edith Wharton was an American novelist, poet and short story writer whose works display a mastery over the realistic fiction genre. One of her earliest and more experimental works was "Sanctuary". Written in 1903, the novella takes on a popular topic of debate in the early 1900s: nature versus nurture. Kate Orme marries a dishonest, sinful man who passes away, leaving her with a son. Fearing that he may inherit his father's immoral ways, Kate devotes...