"First published in 1913 and regarded by many critics as her most substantial novel, The Custom of the Country is Edith Wharton's powerful saga about the beautiful, ruthless Undine Spragg. A woman of extraordinary ambition and exuberant vitality, Undine is consigned by virtue of her sex to the shadow world of the drawing room and boudoir. Marriage remains the one institution through which she can exercise her will as she entrances man after man, marrying...

Newland Archer, a young lawyer in upper-crust 1870's New York, becomes a victim of social expectations and restrictions when he becomes infatuated with his docile fiancee's nonconformist cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska.

Thousands of books on interior design have come and gone since the 1897 publication of this pioneering manual, but The Decoration of Houses remains, thanks to the insightful and inspiring advice of its co-authors. Before she became the Pulitzer Prize—winning author of “The Age of Innocence”, Edith Wharton was a society matron, remodeling a summer home in Newport, Rhode Island. With the able assistance of architect Ogden Codman, Jr., Wharton...

An American in Paris at the turn of the nineteenth century, John Durham pays court to an old flame, Fanny Frisbee, now married to the dissolute Marquis de Malrive. Devoutly Catholic, Fanny's husband is unlikely to grant her a divorce or relinquish custody of their young son, who is heir to the family title. When the Malrive family, urged by Fanny's enigmatic sister-in-law, Madame de Treymes, agrees to a divorce, John must decide whether or not he...

Originally published in 1914, this edition was published in 1916. A young man stranded in a New Hampshire town is offered a room for the night, but his host is less hospitable than he portrayed himself to be in this short ghost story. Cover image from Poems of Life in the Country and by the Sea [1915] by Internet Archive Book Images [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons.

Anna Leath is a young widow, an American living in France. Behind her lies an arid marriage and a life deeply influenced by the rigid code of Old New York. Ahead lies new hope: a chance encounter in London with George Darrow, her first love, has left her awakened, disturbed. Anna returns to her beautiful country chateau, Givré, to await her future. Between two short distances can anything happen to disrupt such promose ...?

Halston Merrick, a once vibrant and adventurous young man, has settled into a mundane life of conformity in his middle years. Upon meeting up with an old friend after a twelve year absence, Merrick reveals his history in the years since his friend knew him, and the quiet way that he let life slip by him.

Edith Wharton's superb satirical novel of the Jazz Age, a critically praised best-seller when it was first published in 1927. Sex, drugs, work, money, infatuation with the occult and spiritual healing--these are the remarkably modern themes that animate Twilight Sleep. The extended family of Mrs. Manford is determined to escape the pain, boredom and emptiness of life through whatever form of "twilight sleep" they can devise or procure. And though...

Edith Wharton was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928 and 1930. Wharton combined her insider's view of America's privileged classes with a brilliant, natural wit to write humorous, incisive novels of social and psychological insight. She was also well acquainted with many of her era's other literary and public figures, including Theodore Roosevelt....

"Glancing by chance at an advertisement in the Spectator, Stephen Glennard perceives a way to escape the downward spiral his career has taken, begin a new life for himself, and win the hand of the beautiful Alexa Trent. It would seem he has one highly sought-after possession: the letters written to him by the eminent and now deceased author, Margaret Aubyn. All he need do is silence his uneasy conscience and sell the letters for publication." "As...