receive alert on new titles by this author

The House of Mirth

The upper stratum of New York society into which Edith Wharton was born in 1862 provided her with an abundance of material as a novelist but did not encourage her growth as an artist. Educated by tutors and governesses, she was raised for only one career: marriage. But her marriage, in 1885, to Edward Wharton was an emotional disappointment, if not a disaster. She suffered the first of a series of nervous breakdowns in 1894. In spite of the strain of her marriage, or perhaps because of it, she began to write fiction and published her first story in 1889.

Her first published book was a guide to interior decorating, but this was followed by several novels and story collections. They were written while the Whartons lived in Newport and New York, traveled in Europe, and built their grand home, The Mount, in Lenox, Massachusetts. In Europe, she met Henry James, who became her good friend, traveling companion, and the sternest but most careful critic of her fiction. The House of Mirth (1905) was both a resounding critical success and a bestseller, as was Ethan Frome (1911). In 1913 the Whartons were divorced, and Edith took up permanent residence in France. Her subject, however, remained America, especially the moneyed New York of her youth. Her great satiric novel, The Custom of the Country was published in 1913 and The Age of Innocence won her the Pulitzer Prize in 1921.

In her later years, she enjoyed the admiration of a new generation of writers, including Sinclair Lewis and F. Scott Fitzgerald. In all, she wrote some thirty books, including an autobiography. A Backwards Glance (1934). She died at her villa near Paris in 1937.

From the Paperback edition.

Share your thoughts on the The House of Mirth ebook with other internet viewers!

Title of ebook: The House of Mirth
ISBN: 9780553904451
Publisher: Bantam Books
Internet download file size: 451 kb
Released online for download: 12-26-2007
Author of eBook: Wharton, Edith

Format

Sku

ISBN

File size

Security

Printing

Copying

Read aloud

Minimum software

Sys. requirements

Download reader

Microsoft

0553904450

9780553904451

451 KB

n/a

Not allowed

No

N/A

See here

Microsoft Reader

eReader

5551721817

9780553904451

362 KB

n/a

Not allowed

No

N/A

See here

Microsoft Reader

Digital Editions

5551721825

9780553904451

1594 KB

n/a

Not allowed

No

N/A

See here

Digital editions

Mobipocket

9780553904451

468 KB

n/a

Not allowed

No

N/A

See here

Mobi Reader

The House of Mirth

Chapter 1

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 curiosity made him turn ... read full excerpt from The House of Mirth ebook

Other Wharton, Edith ebooks :

The Age of Innocence

By Wharton, Edith

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 ...

Best price: $5.17

The Age of Innocence

By Wharton, Edith

The 1920s novel of a passion threatened by convention and played out against a backdrop of New York City's upper class, unimaginable wealth, ...

Best price: $5.91

The Custom of the Country

By Wharton, Edith

Diane Johnson is the author of ten novels, most recently Le Mariage and Le Divorce, two books of essays, two biographies, and ...

Best price: $5.28

Summer

By Wharton, Edith

Chapter One
A GIRL CAMe out of lawyer Royall's house, at the end of the one street of North Dormer, and stood on the doors ...

Best price: $4.39

Ethan Frome & Other Stories

By Wharton, Edith

ethan Frome & Other Stories ...

Best price: $4.88

Ethan Frome

By Wharton, Edith

Set against the bleak winter landscape of New england, ethan Frome is the story of a poor farmer, lonely and downtrodden, his wife Zeena, an ...

Best price: $4.76

The Age of Innocence

By Wharton, Edith

Newland Archer saw little to envy in the marriages of his friends, yet he prided himself that in May Welland he had found the companion of h ...

Best price: $5.03

The Touchstone

By Wharton, Edith

When Bast picks up Trick, a street hustler with few prospects, Trick is prepared to play along, to have some fun. What he's not prepared for ...

Best price: $1.99

The Valley Of Decision

By Wharton, Edith

When Bast picks up Trick, a street hustler with few prospects, Trick is prepared to play along, to have some fun. What he's not prepared for ...

Best price: $8.18

Classics & Drama Categories

Drama General (110)

Classics (1520)

American (61)

Classical/Medieval (52)

Continental European (60)

English, Irish, Scot (183)

Shakespeare (165)

Top eBooks in Classics

Kidnapped

By Stevenson, Robert Louis

Margot Livesey, a native of Scotland, is the author of Criminals and, most recently, The Missing World. She lives in Massachus ...

Best price: $3.84

The House of Mirth

By Wharton, Edith

The upper stratum of New York society into which edith Wharton was born in 1862 provided her with an abundance of material as a novelist but ...

Best price: $4.39

A Message to Garcia

By Hubbard, Elbert

This literary trifle, A Message to Garcia, was written one evening after supper, in a single hour. It was on the Twenty-second of February, ...

Best price: $4.97

The Prince and the Pauper

By Twain, Mark

Rich with surprise and hilarious adventure, The Prince And The Pauper is a delight satire of england's romantic past and a joyful boy ...

Best price: $3.65

The Sea Wolf

By London, Jack

Jack London (1876-1916), by turns a renegade adventurer, a war correspondent, and an avowed socialist, first achieved fame with The Son o ...

Best price: $4.39

Ivanhoe

By Scott, Walter Sir

Hailed by Victor Hugo as "the real epic of our age," Ivanhoe was an immensely popular bestseller when first published in 1819. The ...

Best price: $4.18

White Lies

By Reade, Charles

White Lies ...

Best price: $1.99

Dubliners

By Joyce, James

In these stories about the men and women of the struggling lower middle class and their anxious desires for respectability, Joyce creates an ...

Best price: $9.51

Of Human Bondage

By Maugham, W. Somerset

W. Somerset Maugham was born in Paris in 1874. He trained as a doctor in London where he started writing his first novels. In 1926 he bought ...

Best price: $4.18