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  • Published: 7 December 2011
  • ISBN: 9780451531315
  • Imprint: Signet
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $15.99

Ethan Frome




The new paperback series: Penguin English Library

A masterwork of American literature from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Age of Innocence.

A marked departure from Edith Wharton’s usual ironic contemplation of the fashionable New York society to which she belonged, Ethan Frome is a 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 condemnation, he is ultimately destroyed by that which offers him the greatest chance at happiness.

Like The House of Mirth and many of Edith Wharton’s other novels, Ethan Frome centers on the power of local convention to smother the growth of the individual. Written with stark simplicity, this powerful and tragic novel has long been considered one of Wharton’s greatest works.

  • Published: 7 December 2011
  • ISBN: 9780451531315
  • Imprint: Signet
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $15.99

Other books in the series

The New Penguin Book Of American Short Stories, From Washington Irving To Lydia Davis
A Dog's Heart
The Black Tulip
The Lady of the Camellias
Selected Poetry
On Sparta
Venus in Furs
Man and Superman
Botchan
Military Dispatches

About the author

Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton was born in New York City on January 24, 1862. Edith married Teddy Wharton, who was 12 years older. They lived a life of relative ease with homes in New York, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. Edith became a prolific writer and produced over 40 books in 40 years. Edith divorced Teddy in 1912, having no immediate heirs, and never married again. She was the first woman awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, an honorary Doctorate of Letters from Yale University, and a full membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her novels became so popular that Ms. Wharton was able to live comfortably on her earnings the rest of her life. Edith continued to write until a stroke took her life in August 1937.

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