Portable Edith Wharton

Best known for her novels depicting the stifling conformity and ceremoniousness of the upper-class New York society into which she was born, Edith Wharton also wrote brilliantly in many genres: essays, travel pieces, memoirs, and a variety of short stories. This unique collection provides a fresh look at Wharton's genius by including a generous sampling of her short stories, along with nonfiction, letters, excerpts from the novels The House of Mirth, The Reef, and The Age of Innocence, and Summer, reprinted in its entirety.Also included in this volume is an introduction by Linda Wagner-Martin, who examines the life and literary accomplishments of Edith Wharton, a chronology, notes, and bibliography.
Edited with an introduction by Linda Wagner-Martin.

Author Biography: Edith Wharton (1862-1937) published more than forty volumes of novels, short stories, verse, essays, travel books, and memoirs.
Linda Wagner-Martin is Hanes Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

One of America's most important novelists, Edith Wharton was a refined, relentless chronicler of the Gilded Age and its social mores. Along with close friend Henry James, she helped define literature at the turn of the 20th century, even as she wrote classic nonfiction on travel, decorating and her own life.