Complete Works of Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton, née Edith Newbold Jones, (born January 24, 1862, New York, New York, U.S.--died August 11, 1937, Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt, near Paris, France), American author best known for her stories and novels about the upper-class society into which she was born. Edith Jones came of a distinguished and long-established New York family. She was educated by private tutors and governesses at home and in Europe, where the family resided for six years after the American Civil War, and she read voraciously. She made her debut in society in 1879 and married Edward Wharton, a wealthy Boston banker, in 1885. Although she had had a book of her own poems privately printed when she was 16, it was not until after several years of married life that Wharton began to write in earnest. Her major literary model was Henry James, whom she knew, and her work reveals James's concern for artistic form and ethical issues. She contributed a few poems and stories to Harper's, Scribner's, and other magazines in the 1890s, and in 1897, after overseeing the remodeling of a house in Newport, Rhode Island, she collaborated with the architect Ogden Codman, Jr., on The Decoration of Houses. Her next books, The Greater Inclination (1899) and Crucial Instances (1901), were collections of stories. This collection contain the following: I. Introduction II. Crucial Instances III. The Descent of Man and other stories IV. The Hermit and the Wild Woman and other stories V. Tales of Men and Ghosts VI. Xingu VII. The Choice VIII. Coming Home IX. The Triumph of Night X. Kerfol XI. Autres Temps . . . XII. The Long Run XIII. Here and Beyond XIV. Certain People XV. A Backward Glance XVI. False Dawn XVII. The Old Maid XVIII. The Spark XIX. New Year's Day XX. The Mother's Recompense XXI. Twilight Sleep XXII. The Children XXIII. Hudson River Bracketed XXIV. The Gods Arrive XXV. The Touchstone XXVI. The Valley of Decision XXVII. Sanctuary XXVIII. The House of Mirth XXIX. Madame de Treymes XXX. Fruit of the Tree XXXI. Ethan Frome XXXII. The Reef XXXIII. The Custom of the Country XXXIV. Bunner Sisters XXXV. Summer XXXVI. The Age of Innocence XXXVII. The Glimpses of the Moon