The Best Short Stories of Edith Wharton

Wharton, American author, is best known for her stories and ironic novels about upper class people. Wharton’s central subjects were the conflict between social and individual fulfillment, repressed sexuality, and the manners of old families and the nouveau riche, who had made their fortunes in more recent years. Among her numerous novels, short stories, and travel writings are The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome, and the Pulitzer prize-winning Age of Innocence. In this volume Wharton explores the anguish and hypocrisy hanging over the lives of divorced women in The Other Two, Souls Belated, Autres Temps and The Last Asset. In Roman Fever she points out that defiance is often the weakest defense for a woman. She takes gentle jabs at women’s clubs in Xingu, an old snob in After Holbein and the musty odor of New England’s Indian Summer in Angel at the Grave. No collection of Wharton’s stories would be complete without one of her ghost stories, Pomegranate Seed being one of her best. And finally, in Bunner Sisters she reminds us that she occasionally strayed down streets where no calling cards were ever left. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.