henry james

Considered by some to be her finest work, Edith Wharton’s „Summer” created a sensation when first published in 1917, as it was one of the first novels to deal honestly with a young woman’s sexual awakening. Seventeen-year-old Charity Royall is desperate to escape life with her hard-drinking adoptive father. Their isolated village stifles her, and his behavior increasingly disturbs her. When a young...

Even a short novel like „Madame de Treymes” shows you what a masterful writer Edith Wharton was. It is a captivating portrait of turn-of-the-century American and French culture. Inspired by Wharton’s own entré into Parisian society in 1906 and reminiscent of the works of Henry James, it tells the story of two young innocents abroad: Fanny Frisbee of New York, unhappily married to the dissolute Marquis...