The House of Mirth
Lily Bart is beautiful, poor and ambitious in a city where marriage is the only profession open to her. Wharton follows her through a series of rooms, parties and financial arrangements, and the tension comes from the fact that Lily understands her situation perfectly and still cannot escape it.
The novel is often read as a tragedy of vanity, but it is more interesting as an account of how money works in a society that pretends not to talk about it. Wharton's dialogue is excellent, and the minor characters are drawn with real cruelty. It is the best novel about New York before the First World War.
Public-domain status
First published in 1905. In the United States, works published before 1930 are in the public domain. In the European Union the general term is the life of the author plus 70 years; Edith Wharton died in 1937, so this work has been free to republish there since 2008.
Read the text free
- Project Gutenberg, ebook no. 284 — plain text, EPUB and Kindle, checked by us
- Internet Archive — scanned editions and free audiobooks
- Open Library — edition history and borrowable copies
Keep reading
- Moby-Dick — Herman Melville, 1851
- Leaves of Grass — Walt Whitman, 1855
- Bleak House — Charles Dickens, 1853
- Oliver Twist — Charles Dickens, 1838
- New York — the city behind the books
- Reading lists — 19 ways through the collection
Find a print edition on Amazon · As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Disclosure