Penguin Books Australia

A searing, shocking tale of women as consumer items in a man's world, The House of Mirth sees Lily Bart, beautiful and charming, living among the wealthy families of New York but reluctant to finally commit herself to a husband. In her search for freedom and the happiness she feels she deserves, Lily is ultimately ruined by scandal.

Edith Wharton's shattering novel created controversy on its publication...

For the 150th anniversary year of Edith Wharton's birth: her three greatest novels in a couture-inspired deluxe edition featuring a new introduction by Jonathan Franzen.

Born into a distinguished New York family, Edith Wharton chronicled the lives of the wealthy, the well born, and the nouveau riches in fiction that often hinges on the collision of personal passion and social convention. This volume...

A marked departure from Edith Wharton's usual ironic contemplation of fashionable New York society to which she belonged, Ethan Frome is sharply etched portrait of the simple inhabitants of a nineteenth-century New England village.  The protagonist, Ethan Frome, is a man tormented by a passionate love for his ailing wife's young cousin.  Trapped by the bonds of marriage and the fear of public...

The beautiful Lily Bart lives among the nouveaux riches of New York City - people whose millions were made in railroads, shipping, land speculation, and banking. In this morally and aesthetically bankrupt world, Lily, age twenty-nine, seeks a husband who can satisfy her cravings for endless admiration and all the trappings of wealth. Her quest comes to a scandalous end when she is accused of being...

A tale of despair, forbidden emotions, and sexual undercurrents in the New England countryside

Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious, and hypochondriac wife, Zeenie. But when Zeenie's vivacious cousin enters their household as a 'hired girl,' Ethan finds himself obsessed with her and with the possibilities for happiness...

The return of the beautiful Countess Olenska into the rigidly conventional society of New York sends reverberations throughout the upper reaches of society.

Newland Archer, an eligible young man of the establishment is about to announce his engagement to May Welland, a pretty ingénue, when May's cousin, Countess Olenska, is introduced into their circle. The Countess brings with her an aura of...

A tale of forbidden sexual passion and thwarted dreams played out against the lush, summer backdrop of the Massachusetts Berkshires Edith Wharton called Summer her 'hot Ethan.' In their rural settings and their poor, uneducated protagonists, Summer (1916) and Ethan Frome represent a sharp departure from Wharton's familiar depictions of the urban upper class. Charity Royall lives unhappily with her...