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Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton

  • An original compilation of eight of Edith Wharton’s gothic stories

    A ghostly presence in “The Lady’s Maid’s Bell” desires revenge against a tyrannical husband. In “Mr. Jones,” Lady Jane Lynke inherits an estate unexpectedly and can’t make sense of how to manage the servants—especially since the caretaker has been dead for decades but keeps giving orders.

    Meanwhile, in “Afterward,” a newly wealthy American couple moves into a large, isolated house in southern England complete with a ghost—and the mysteries surrounding the husband’s business are slowly uncovered. In “The Hermit and the Wild Woman,” the “hermit,” while a young boy, witnessed the killing of his family during an attack on his town. As a result of this trauma, he has retreated into isolation—until he meets a “wild woman” who comes to live nearby.

    These are just a few of the wonderful and unnerving tales gathered together in this new compilation of Wharton’s gothic stories.

  • A Voices in the Wind Audio Theatre production

    This collection features four spine-tingling horror stories to entice your imagination, including “Bewitched” by Edith Wharton, “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe, “The Body Snatcher” by Robert Louis Stevenson, and “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe. Each story is chillingly enhanced by music and sound effects.

    Four Classic Horror Stories is best listened to by candlelight at the midnight hour, when the wind howls ‘round the house and ghosts whisper from the dark shadows!

  • Wharton’s antiwar masterpiece probes the devastation of World War I on the home front.

    Inspired by a young man Edith Wharton met during her war relief work in France, A Son at the Front opens in Paris on July 30, 1914, as Europe totters on the brink of war. Expatriate American painter John Campton—whose only son, George, having been born in Paris, must report for duty in the French army—struggles to keep his son away from the front while grappling with the moral implications of his actions.

    Interweaving her own experiences of the Great War with themes of parental and filial love, art and self-sacrifice, national loyalties and class privilege, A Son at the Front is a poignant meditation on art and possession, fidelity and responsibility in which Wharton tells an intimate and captivating story of war behind the lines.

  • A great new collection of classic short fiction, brilliantly read by a selection of narrators

    This recording includes the following stories:

    • “The Lightening-Rod Man” by Herman Melville

    • “One of the Missing” by Ambrose Bierce

    • “The Leopard Man’s Story” by Jack London

    • “Tennessee’s Partner” by Bret Harte

    • “The New Catacomb” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

    • “A Pair of Silk Stockings” by Kate Chopin

    • “My Watch” and “The Widow’s Protest” by Mark Twain

    • “An Ideal Family” by Kate Mansfield

    • “A Painful Case” by James Joyce

    • “Small Fry” by Anton Chekhov

    • “The Road from Colonus” by E. M. Forster

    • “Silhouettes” by Jerome K Jerome

    • “The Voice of the City” by O. Henry

    • “Dalyrimple Goes Wrong” by F. Scott Fitzgerald

    • “The Diamond Mine” by Willa Cather

    • “The Man with the Golden Brain” by Alphonse Daudet

    • “Morella” by Edgar Allan Poe

    • “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant

    • “The Portrait” by Edith Wharton

    • “The Philosopher in the Apple Orchard” by Anthony Hope

    • “Monkey Nuts” by D. H. Lawrence

  • Enduring stories that are as relevant today as they were when written at the turn of the century by influential women writers. 

    This audio recording includes: On the Divide and The Garden Lodge by Willa Cather; A Point at Issue, Desiree's Baby, A Pair of Silk Stockings, and The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin; Three Thanksgivings and The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman; and The Pelican and The Fullness of Life by Edith Wharton.

  • Winner of the first Pulitzer Prize for literature ever awarded to a woman, The Age of Innocence is Edith Wharton’s elegant portrait of desire and betrayal in old New York.

    In the highest circle of New York social life during the 1870s, Newland Archer, a young lawyer, prepares to marry the docile May Welland. But before their engagement is announced, he meets the mysterious, nonconformist Countess Ellen Olenska, May’s cousin, who has returned to New York after a long absence. Ellen mirrors his own sense of disillusionment with society and the
    “good marriage” he is about to embark upon and provokes a moral struggle within him as he continues to go through the motions.

    A social commentary of surprising compassion and insight, The Age of Innocence toes the line between the comedy of manners and the tragedy of thwarted love.

  • It’s midnight. Turn out the lights, cuddle with your true love, and shiver to fright-meisters Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, and H. P. Lovecraft.

    Quicken your pulse with the elegant terror of Henry James, Edith Wharton, and Guy de Maupassant. Chortle at the black glee of H. H. Munro and Ambrose Bierce.

    These fourteen tales, plays, and poems, gleaned from cultures around the world, range from wickedly comic to deathly serious, from New England reserve to Gallic passion. This volume of late-night listening is a witch’s brew of readings and dramatizations seasoned tastefully, and—where appropriate—not so tastefully, with music and sound effects, under the direction of award-winning producer Yuri Rasovsky and his coven of twenty-odd—some very odd—performers.

    Shut your eyes and give your mind a listen—if you dare.

  • Set among the elegant brownstones and opulent country houses of turn-of-the-century upper-class New York, Edith Wharton’s first great novel is a precise, satiric portrayal of what the author herself called “a society of irresponsible pleasure-seekers.”

    Her brilliantly complex characterization of the doomed Lily Bart, whose stunning beauty and dependence on marriage for economic survival reduce her to a decorative object, is an incisive commentary on the status of women in that society. Lily is all too much a product of the world indicated by the title, a phrase taken from Ecclesiastes: “The heart of fools is in the house of mirth.” From her tragic attraction to bachelor lawyer Lawrence Seldon to her desperate relationship with the social-climbing Rosedale, it is Lily’s very specialness that threatens the fulfillment she seeks in life.

    Time after time, Lily fails to make the ultimate move, to abandon the possibility of a greater love and enter into a mercenary union. This masterful novel from one of literature’s greatest voices is a tragedy of money, morality, and missed opportunity.

  • "To step on board a steamer in a Spanish port, and three hours later to land in a country without a guidebook, is a sensation to rouse the hunger of the most replete sightseer. The sensation is attainable by any one who will take the trouble to row out into the harbor of Algeciras and scramble onto a little black boat headed across the straits."

    A classic of travel writing, In Morocco is Edith Wharton's remarkable account of her journey to that country during World War I. With her characteristic sense of adventure, Wharton set out to explore Morocco and its people, traveling by military jeep to Rabat, Moulay Idriss, Fez, and Marrakech, from the Atlantic coast to the high Atlas. Along the way, she witnessed religious ceremonies and ritual dances, visited the opulent palaces of the sultan, and was admitted to the mysterious world of his harem.

  • Wharton's most erotic and lyrical novel, Summer explores a daring theme for 1917: a woman's awakening to her sexuality.

    Eighteen-year-old Charity Royall lives in the small town of North Dormer, ignorant of desire until the arrival of architect Lucius Harney. Independent yet kept from love until now by society's expectations, Charity finds herself wrapped up in a love affair with Harney.

    Like the succulent summer landscape in the Berkshires around them, Charity’s romance is lush and picturesque, but its consequences are harsh and real.

    Praised for its realism and candor by such writers as Joseph Conrad and Henry James and compared to Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Summer was one of Wharton's personal favorites of all her novels and remains as fresh and relevant today as when it was first written.

  • The Reef follows the fancies of George Darrow, a young diplomat en route from London to France, intent on proposing to the widowed Anna Leath. Unsettled by Anna's reticence, Darrow drifts into an affair with Sophy Viner, a charmingly na├»ve and impecunious young woman whose relations with Darrow and Anna's family threaten his prospects for success. The affair becomes the reef on which four lives are in danger of foundering: two of them innocent, and two of them burdened with experience and tinged with desperation.

    A challenge to the moral climate of the day, this story of the drastic effects of a casual sexual betrayal offers a clear-eyed assessment of the possibilities and limitations of human love.

  • Set in New York in the 1920s, The Glimpses of the Moon details the romantic misadventures of Nick Lansing and Susy Branch, two high-society hangers-on with the right connections but a lack of funds. To maintain their status, they decide to marry and spend a year or so sponging off their wealthy friends, honeymooning in their mansions and villas. Both agree that they're free to dissolve the marriage if either one of them meets someone who can advance them socially. How their scheme unfolds is a comedy of Eros that will charm all fans of Wharton’s work.

  • Madame de Treymes follows the fortunes of two innocents abroad: Fanny Frisbee of New York, unhappily married to the dissolute Marquis de Malrive, scion of a great house of the Faubourg St. Germain; and John Durham, her childhood friend, who arrives in Paris intent on persuading Fanny to divorce her husband and marry him instead. A scintillating picture of American and French society at the turn of the century, it is also a subtle investigation of the clash of cultures and the role of women in the social hierarchy.

    This edition also includes the novellas Sanctuary and Bunner Sisters, two short works rich in the social satire and cunning insight that characterized Wharton’s acclaimed novels The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence.

  • Often regarded as Edith Wharton's finest achievement,Ethan Fromecontrasts sharply with her usual ironic contemplation of fashionable New York society. Set in the bleak winter landscape of New England farmlands, this keenly-etched portrait of the simple inhabitants of a nineteenth-century village is a masterpiece of literary realism.

    Ethan is a patient, rough-hewn man tormented by a passionate love for his sickly wife's young cousin, Mattie, who has come to offer her domestic services. Restricted by the bonds of marriage—however loveless it may be—and the fear of public condemnation, Ethan's desperate quest for happiness leads ultimately to pain and despair.

    Ethan's story, with its tragic implications of what might have been, has held irresistible fascination for readers for over a century. The tale of a decent man's fall brought on by his finest feelings is a haunting study of the human conflict between desire and duty.

  • This spare, mesmerizing novel is Edith Wharton’s money-can’t-buy-happiness tale. Young Stephen Glennard is poor, but he has an unanticipated gambling chip: a collection of love letters from a scorned but now famous lover, the distinguished novelist Margaret Aubyn. To raise money for his forthcoming wedding to another woman, Stephen stoops to selling the letters. His decision brings him wealth and admission to society, but a mystery contained in the missives comes back to haunt him, and it may take a madness of guilt to remind Stephen that he does, after all, have a conscience.

    Betrayal, greed, and consequences faced make this sly, masterful story a deft social and psychological portrait to stand with Wharton’s best.

  • One of the classic works on interior decoration, Edith Wharton's The Decoration of Houses offers a comprehensive look at the history and character of turn-of-the-century interior design. Cowritten with architect Ogden Codman, Jr., this invaluable reference provides us with numerous keen and practical axioms for house design, such as (1) The better the house, the less need for curtains, and (2) the height of a well-proportioned doorway should be twice its width.

    In the words of John Barrington Bayley, President of Classical America, "this book has charm. The Decoration of Houses brings to mind the pictures of Walter Gay: There are the reflections in looking-glasses, and on parquet, and the garnitures of chimney-pieces, boiseriers, the odor of wax; outside the tall glazed doors there is a sunny silent terrace, we are now at Mrs. Wharton's Pavillon Colombe—a well laid out parterre, a rose garden, and an orchard of Reinette apples and luscious double cherries."

  • One of Edith Wharton’s most acclaimed works, The Custom of the Country is a blistering indictment of materialism, power, and misplaced values. Its heroine, Undine Spragg, is one of the most ruthless characters in all of literature, as selfishly unscrupulous as she is fiercely beautiful. When her family acquires a small fortune, they leave America’s heartland and head east. As Undine climbs the social ladder through a series of marriages and affairs, she shows little concern for who she has to step on to get anything and everything she desires. Her rise to the top of New York’s elite society—before moving on to conquer Paris as well—provides a poignant and scathing commentary on the unquenchable ambitions of America’s nouveau riche.