The House of Mirth (Norton Critical Editions)

by Edith Wharton (Author), Elizabeth Ammons (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1990

  $4.18

  The text has been introduced and thoroughly annotated by the editor for student readers. Backgrounds and Contexts includes selections from Edith Wharton's letters; articles from the period about etiquette, vocations for women, factory life, and Working Girls' Clubs; excerpts from the work of contemporary social thinkers including Thorstein Veblen, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Olive Schreiner; and a consideration of anti-Semitism at the turn of the century by historian John Higham. Also included are Charles Dana Gibson's precautionary piece Marrying for Money (including four Gibson drawings) and a tableau vivant of The Dying Gladiator.

  Criticism reprints six central contemporary reviews of the novel and six biographical and interpretive modern essays by Millicent Bell, Louis Auchincloss, Cynthia Griffin Wolff, R. W. B. Lewis, Elaine Showalter, and Elizabeth Ammons.

  A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.

• Used

  Paperback
  2000

  $3.28

  Edith Wharton's classic novel follows Lily Bart, a beautiful, witty and sophisticated New York socialite, popular with both 'old money' and the growing numbers of nouveaux riches, as she searches for a suitable husband. First published in 1905, The House of Mirth shocked the New York society it so deftly chronicles, portraying the moral, social and economic constraints on an independent woman who dared to claim the privileges of marriage without the responsibilities.

  The House of Mirth is now a major FilmFour release starring Gillian Anderson (The X-Files), Eric Stoltz, Elizabeth McGovern, and Dan Ackroyd based on the classic novel by Edith Wharton. Sumptously filmed by Terrence Davies, and superbly acted, this film is an evocative adaptation that will appeal to fans of The Age of Innocence, Emma, and other successful costume dramas.

• New

  Paperback
  2002

  $6.82

  Introduction and Notes by Janet Beer, Manchester Metropolitan University. The House of Mirth tells the story of Lily Bart, aged 29, beautiful, impoverished and in need of a rich husband to safeguard her place in the social elite, and to support her expensive habits - her clothes, her charities and her gambling. Unwilling to marry without both love and money, Lily becomes vulnerable to the kind of gossip and slander which attach to a girl who has been on the marriage market for too long. Wharton charts the course of Lily's life, providing, along the way, a wider picture of a society in transition, a rapidly changing New York where the old certainties of manners, morals and family have disappeared and the individual has become an expendable commodity. The House of Mirth was published in October 1905 to widespread critical acclaim. It became an instant bestseller and is regarded today as one of Edith Wharton's most accomplished and compelling social satires.