The House of Mirth.

WHARTON, Edith.

$1,250.00

Item Number: 144789

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1908.

First edition, early printing of the novel that brought Wharton international success. Octavo, bound in full morocco by the Harcourt Bindery, gilt titles and tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, gilt ruling to the front and rear panels, gilt inner dentelles stamp-signed by the Harcourt Bindery, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. In near fine condition.

"The House of Mirth, crucial in Wharton's career, establishes many of her major themes and motifs. In its careful structure and symbolism, it reveals how much she had learned about her craft. Its imagery, concerned with fate, Furies, light, darkness, beauty, Darwinian nature, economic determinism, a social realm in transition, and, above all, a circumscribed role for women, points to themes she would employ throughout her career" (Lowe, Modern American Women Writers, 389). "With this novel Wharton recognized, as she would note in her 1934 autobiography, A Backward Glance, that her true subject was the society of old New York and 'its power of debasing people and ideals" (ANB). Listed by Modern Library as one of the 100 greatest novels of the twentieth century.