Wharton, Edith

Collects Edith Wharton's "Ethan Frome," and "Summer," depicting a New England farmer who falls in love with his hypochondriac wife's cousin and the love affair between humble New England woman and an aristocratic man; and includes writings on the historical context of the work and critical essays.

Beautiful Undine Spragg from Apex, Kansas, is a social climber. Her society career, marriages, divorces, and conquests are all part of her greed.

Tale of the manners and morals of New York society in the later 1800s. Newland Archer is a young attorney, handsome and eligible. Torn between his socially acceptable fiancee and the more earthy attractions of Countess Olenska, Archer is truly on the horns of a dilemma. The plot is unobvious, delicately developed, with a fine finale that exquisitely satisfies one's sense of fitness, and as always with Edith Wharton, the drama of character is greater than that of event.

Novel written in 1912, tells the story of Anna Leath and George Darrow, two high society Americans in France whose renewed relationship is shaken by his casual sexual affair with Sophy Viner, an appealing woman of the lower classes who happens to be loved by Anna's stepson.

A portrayal of New York society in the 1870s where money counted for less than manners and morals.