The House Of Mirth

Author: Edith Wharton

Stock information

General Fields

  • : $10.00 AUD
  • : 9781840224191
  • : Wordsworth Editions Ltd
  • : Wordsworth Editions Ltd
  • :
  • : 0.204
  • : November 2000
  • : 6.95
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  • :
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Edith Wharton
  • : Wordsworth Classics
  • : Paperback
  • : New edition
  • :
  • :
  • : 320
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Barcode 9781840224191
9781840224191

Description

The House of Mirth tells the story of Lily Bart, aged 29, beautiful, impoverished and in need of a rich husband to safeguard her place in the social elite, and to support her expensive habits - her clothes, her charities and her gambling. Unwilling to marry without both love and money, Lily becomes vulnerable to the kind of gossip and slander which attach to a girl who has been on the marriage market for too long. Wharton charts the course of Lily's life, providing, along the way, a wider picture of a society in transition, a rapidly changing New York where the old certainties of manners, morals and family have disappeared and the individual has become an expendable commodity.

Author description

Edith Wharton (1862-1937) was born into a distinguished New York family. She not only lived as part of smart society, but it was one of her principal subjects. She was a prolific writer of novels, short stories and articles. She also produced a volume of poems and an adaptation for the theatre of her novel, The House of Mirth. Ethan Frome, which is considered her greatest tragic story, is, by contrast, about simple New England people.