num_pages: 480
description: First published in 1913, Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country is a scathing novel of ambition featuring one of the most ruthless heroines in literature. Undine Spragg is as unscrupulous as she is magnetically beautiful. Her rise to the top of New York’s high society from the nouveau riche provides a provocative commentary on the upwardly mobile and the aspirations that eventually cause their ruin. One of Wharton’s most acclaimed works, The Custom of the Country is a stunning indictment of materialism and misplaced values that is as powerful today for its astute observations about greed and power as when it was written nearly a century ago.
language: English
title: The Custom of the Country
titlecomplete: The Custom of the Country (Bantam Classics)
characters: Charles Bowen, Raymond de Chelles, Clare Van Degen, Claud Popple, Mabel Lipscomb, Peter Van Degen, Undine Spragg, Abner Spragg, Elmer Moffatt, Laura Fairford, Leota Spragg, Ralph Marvell
genres: New York, Literature, 20th Century, Literary Fiction, Classic Literature, American, Novels, Fiction, Classics, Historical Fiction
ratings_count: 13184
places: New York City, New York
publisher: Bantam Classics