Set in rural New England, "Ethan Frome" is the story of its title character who marries Zenobia, a nagging hypochondriac of a woman, and finds himself trapped in an unfulfilling life. When Zenobia's young cousin Mattie Silver comes to live with them, Frome falls in love with her. "Ethan Frome" is the story of forbidden love and its tragic consequences. In "Summer" we have the story of the sexual awakening of a young woman, Charity Royall. Charity,...

Edith Wharton was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928 and 1930. Wharton combined her insider's view of America's privileged classes with a brilliant, natural wit to write humorous, incisive novels of social and psychological insight. She was also well acquainted with many of her era's other literary and public figures, including Theodore Roosevelt....

This early work on Italian Villas and their Gardens is a beautifully illustrated look at the subject. Chapters include; Florentine Villas, Sienese Villas, Roman Villas, Villas near Rome, Genoese Villas, Lombard Villas and Villas of Venetia. This fascinating work is thoroughly recommended for inclusion on the bookshelf of all historians Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900's and before, are now extremely scarce and...

Age of innocence. Seemingly happy in his comfortable, if repressive, world of upper class New York, Newland Archer finds himself questioning all his carefully cherished assumptions about life when he meets his fiancee's cousin, the mysterious, non-conformist Countess Olenska. Summer. The book's heroine is an eighteen-year-old girl named Charity Royall. Living in the small town of North Dormer, she is ignorant of desire until she meets a visiting...

The story takes place at the opening of a new century, one that held forth all kinds of promises, especially for women. In this post-Victorian Fifth Avenue milieu, Lily Bart, an unmarried woman of 29 with dwindling prospects, needs a husband badly. She lives beyond her means, relying on the grudging charity of her elderly aunt. She is the kind of girl who would make an admirable decoration on some fine gentleman's arm, but there is a liveliness--a...