The House of Mirth

Edith Wharton was a natural story-teller. As plots do in real life, hers flow directly from character. Her prose is so effortlessly elegant that you’re rarely aware as they purl by that the sentences are so pretty…I was born after the heavy spade work of female emancipation was done. But 100 years ago, Edith Wharton’s drive, independence, wilfulness and autodidactic mastery of the English language were extraordinary, and I bashfully claim her as a kindred spirit – Lionel Shriver * Guardian *A cautionary tale of social disaster, told with wit and elan * Independent *Like Henry James, Wharton has a wonderful gift of revealing the inner life of her characters while also documenting the elegance and hypocrisy of high society…the accumulation of desolation in the final three chapters reduces me to tears – Jonathan Bate * Sunday Telegraph *[Edith Wharton was] an ambitious, brilliant and industrious woman who created “her own personal and professional revolution” * Sunday Times *Edith Wharton’s 1905 novel gave literature one of its most complicated tragic heroines * Independent *The supreme novel of New York in its last great belle époque…Wharton is at her magnificent, merciless best here…The novel witheringly shows the savage side of high society, an impeccably mannered world of bridge and betrayal that simply spits Bart out * Guardian *No one has bettered Edith Wharton on the cash-sex nexus of the respectable, as well as the clashes of propriety and fashion. The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth are probably the best novels by this knowing, compassionate writer * Independent on Sunday *In a world of massive tragedy, it may seem strange to find the decline and death of Lily Bart, Edith Wharton’s doomed protagonist in The House of Mirth, so sad…what makes one weep for Lily Bart in the end is the way her basic moral rectitude is so cruelly betrayed – Anthony Beevor * Sunday Telegraph *

Edith Wharton was born on 24 January 1862 in New York. She was educated in both America and Europe. In 1885 she married Edward Robbins Wharton. In 1899 she published her first work, a collection of stories called The Greater Inclination. In 1900 she published her first novel, The Touchstone. She wrote many other works including travel writing, home decoration manuals, short stories and her famous novels The House of Mirth (1905), Ethan Frome (1911), The Custom of the Country (1913) and The Age of Innocence (1920). She lived in France from 1907. She was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1916 for her work helping refugees there during the war. Edith Wharton died on 11 August 1937.

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