Details
Synopsis
Published in 1905, Edith Wharton's first novel, THE HOUSE OF MIRTH, navigates the murky waters of class-bound courtship and marriage in turn-of-the-century upper-crust Manhattan. Ironic, sharp, and tragic, the novel follows beautiful, orphaned Lily Bart in her search for a rich husband--the only route open to her if she is to survive in a ruthlessly materialistic world. Mercilessly, Wharton exposes the cruelty and indifference of a society in which such a woman has no role except to be exploited and looked down upon. Nor does she neglect to expose the vanity and delusions of poor Lily herself--qualities that undermine her considerable intelligence and charm. As always, Wharton is writing about a world she knows first-hand, and one in which she suffered her own trials. The complex and poignant tale of Lily Bart is one of her most popular and successful novels
| Details | | Series: | Norton Critical Edition Series |
| Size | | Height: | 8.5 in | | Width: | 5.3 in | | Thickness: | 0.8 in | | Weight: | 12.8 oz |
Publisher's Notes
First Line: "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."
Industry Reviews
"There are certain subjects too shallow to yield anything to the most searching gaze... Now my problem was how to make use of a subject--fashionable New York--which, of all ofthers, seemed most completely to fall within the condemned category... A frivolous society can acquire dramatic significance only through what its frivolity destroys... The answer was my heroine, Lily Bart."
Book Text - Edith Wharton
"[U]niquely authentic among American novels of manners."
Auchincloss
"Perhaps the finest study of American social life, certainly the strongest and most artistic novel of the year...."
San Francisco Chronicle - George H. Fitch (10/29/1905)
"THE HOUSE OF MIRTH appears to be the novel of the season...[and] has occasioned the most discussion of a serious sort. It is a work which has enlisted the matured powers of a writer whose performance is always distinguished, and whose coupling of psychological insight with the gift of expression is probably not surpassed by any other woman novelist of our time."
Dial - William Payne Morton (01/01/1905)
"The first pages of this novel make it obvious, even if the writer's name had not conveyed the information, that we have to consider a serious work of fiction....There is no doubt that Mrs. Wharton has so illuminated THE HOUSE OF MIRTH for us that we shall not soon forget it."
Times Literary Supplement - Virginia Woolf (11/15/1905)
"There is perhaps no more searing indictment of the cruelties of capitalism... THE HOUSE OF MIRTH is a cruel book, but it is not a cynical one... Nowhere else in fiction are the contradictions--economic, social, sexual--embodied in the person of the desirable female explored with a clearer eye."
Mary Gordon
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