This volume includes four Wharton novels, but I only read the first--"House of Mirth"--before lending the book to my mother. Brilliant writing and some terrific characters, but in the end I didn't care enough about the main character to really care about what happened to her. Sorry, Edith.

I love love love Edith Wharton's writing. I'm reading The Custom of the Country. I've already read Ethan Frome and could gush on about it forever. Very strange for a girl who doesn't like fiction!

The Age of Innocence is my favorite.

Over time, I have been slowly reading through Edith Wharton's writing and took this volume from the library to read The Reef because there was no single copy of it there. There is something so enveloping in Wharton's descriptions that you just move right in to the lives of her characters. Diplomat George Darrow was finally to leave England for France to meet Anna Leath, his childhood friend and love, where he intended to propose. He had not married and she was a widow when they chanced to meet at a dinner in the American Embassy. They had this and a few additional opportunities to talk in depth about the intervening years as Wharton unfolds their relationship: ". . . she contrived to make him understand that what was so inevitably coming was not to come too soon. . . . she seemed to wish not to miss any stage in the gradual reflowering of their intimacy. Darrow, for his part, was content to wait if she wished it."
As he was leaving on the train, he received a telegram saying that they needed to postpone their meeting due to an unspecified "unexpected obstacle." In the pouring rain, between the train and the boat, he rescued young Sophy Viner and her tattered umbrella, headed to Paris to study the stage. Somewhat put out by Anna Leath's postponement, he decided that he would go ahead to France and wait for her to notify him that the time was right for them to meet. He eventually returned to London before going to Anna's, but not before showing the unpretentious and charming Sophy around Paris for a number of days.
In France at Anna's home, he learned that the original postponement had been so that she could smooth the way with her former mother-in-law, Madame de Chantelle, for her impetuous young stepson to marry someone who was not approved. When it turned out to be Sophy Viner, neither she nor Darrow let the Leaths know about the days in Paris.
Even though Wharton's beautiful prose could not be as effective as when read, the plotline would make an excellent play if it hasn't already.

This Library of America edition contains four (count 'em, FOUR) Edith Wharton novels, but I only read Custom of the Country. It's been decades since I read Ethan Frome, and this seemed quite different, so same author only in a Key of B Majorly Different.

How so? It reminded me a bit of Henry James, a guy I swore off after choking on stuffy, drawing-room air from reading his books under duress (usually assigned in school). Wharton uses a lot of the same settings as James but makes it more interesting.

My main memory from this book will be how much I hated its protagonist, Undine Spragg. I mean *hated* as in from the get-go. I think Daryl Hall and John Oates wrote that song "Man-Eater" about her, but really it's not so much men as their money Undine's (sounds like "undies") after. She's (more than) enough to give femmes fatale a bad name.

So despite the good plotting and great characterization, there was my impatience for justice which, I fear, was not anywhere NEAR satisfied at the end. A little, but Undine deserves more than a little when it comes to sipping from the grail of comeuppance.

Absolute classics that still resonate. Loved them in high school and still love them today.

This is a very satisfying, beautiful edition, and The Age of Innocence is a supreme American novel.
And just want to add The House of Mirth to the 5-star review. Amazing, beautiful, perfect prose marred only by some lazy bigotry that Wharton shared with so many other writers.

Reading The Custom of the Country now.

I re-read "Custom of the Country" for a book club. The novel traces the career of Undine Spragg in the late Gilded Age. Undine is a Becky Sharpe-like character who uses her beauty and will to carve out a place for herself in society. In her quest to find the right "set," Undine blunders into established societies (Washington Square New York, French aristocracy) she does not understand and that do not understand the magnitude of her destructiveness. The inevitable result is disaster for everyone but Undine. The novel is an insightful allegory of American capitalism and its discontents.

This took a bit for me to get into and then I grew to love the subtle nature if the book. It is a beautiful snapshot of the era and has a well-deserved spot on top classics lists.

Wharton's novel is a departure from what you expect in a novel of manners and it can even be described as depressing. The question of what are we to take from this is strong as it seems to chronicle a wasted life to serve as a lesson for others. It does show the the attractions and terrors of society, especially against the inability of an individual to face reality and make adjustments.

This was a book club choice and I rather unwillingly started it. I'd read many Wharton and Henry James books in my 20s. It really is a brilliantly written book that gives you a knowledge of NY Society at the turn of the century. What a group of dull, self-centered, shallow people! However, with a couple of more inquisitive, intellectual people, it remains a fascinating book. It's one thing to write about the past, and another thing to write about a world you know, which Wharton does.