The House of Mirth

The House of Mirth stands as the work that first established Edith Wharton’s eminent literary reputation. In it she honed her acerbic style and discovered her defining the fashionable New York society in which she had been raised, and which held the power to debase both people and ideals. Its beautiful, intelligent heroine, Lily Bart, is both hopelessly addicted to the pleasures of the moneyed world and unable to survive in it.