The House of Mirth

With an introduction by Elizabeth Hardwick,Contemporary Reviews, and LettersBetween Edith Wharton and Her Publisher” A frivolous society can acquire dramatic significance only through what its frivolity destroys.“–Edith WhartonLily Bart knows that she must marry–her expensive tastes and mounting debts demand it–and, at twenty-nine, she has every artful wile at her disposal to secure that end. But attached as she is to the social world of her wealthy suitors, something in her rebels against the insipid men whom circumstances compel her to charm. “Why must a girl pay so dearly for her least escape,” Lily muses as she contemplates the prospect of being bored all afternoon by Percy Grice, dull but undeniably rich, “on the bare chance that he might ulti-mately do her the honor of boring her for life?” Lily is distracted from her prey by the arrival of Lawrence Selden, handsome, quick-witted, and penniless. A runaway bestseller on publication in 1905, The House of Mirth is a brilliant romantic novel of manners, the book that established Edith Wharton as one of America’s greatest novelists.” A tragedy of our modern life, in which the relentlessness of what men used to call Fate and esteem, in their ignorance, a power beyond their control, is as vividly set forth as ever it was by Aeschylus or Shakespeare.” –The New York TimesEdith Wharton (1862-1937) was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in1920 for The Age of Innocence. But it was the publication of The House of Mirth in 1905 that marked Wharton’s coming-of-age as a writer.

Edith Wharton was born into the upper stratum of New York society in 1862, a world that provided her with abundant material as a novelist but did not encourage her artistic growth. Educated by tutors and governesses, she was raised primarily for marriage. However, her marriage in 1885 to Edward Wharton was emotionally disappointing. She suffered the first of a series of nervous breakdowns in 1894.

Despite the strain of her marriage, she began writing fiction, publishing her first story in 1889. Her first published book was a guide to interior decorating, followed by several novels and story collections. These 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 friend, traveling companion, and critic.

The House of Mirth (1905) was a critical and commercial success, as was Ethan Frome (1911). In 1913, the Whartons divorced, and Edith took up permanent residence in France. Her subject, however, remained America, especially the moneyed New York of her youth. Her 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 her autobiography, A Backwards Glance (1934). She died at her villa near Paris in 1937.

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