num_pages: 272
description: A bestseller when it was originally published nearly a century ago, Wharton's first literary success was set amid the previously unexplored territory of fashionable, turn-of-the-century New York society, an area with which she was intimately familiar.The tragic love story reveals the destructive effects of wealth and social hypocrisy on Lily Bart, a ravishing beauty. Impoverished but well-born, Lily realizes a secure future depends on her acquiring a wealthy husband. Her downfall begins with a romantic indiscretion, intensifies with an accumulation of gambling debts, and climaxes in a maelstrom of social disasters.More a tale of social exclusion than of failed love, The House of Mirth reveals Wharton's compelling gifts as a storyteller and her clear-eyed observations of the savagery beneath the well-bred surface of high society. As with The Age of Innocence and Ethan Frome, this novel was also made into a successful motion picture.
language: English
title: The House of Mirth
titlecomplete: The House of Mirth (Dover Thrift Editions: Classic Novels)
characters: Simon Rosedale, Gerty Farish, Carry Fisher, Julia Peniston, George Dorset, Bertha Dorset, Lily Bart, Lawrence Selden, Simon Rosedale, Judy Trenor, Gus Trenor, Percy Gryce, Bertha Dorset, George Dorset, Gerty Farish, Ju, Gus Trenor, Lawrence Selden, Lily Bart, Percy Gryce, Judy Trenor
genres: 20th Century, American, New York, Historical Fiction, Historical, Novels, Literature, Classic Literature, Classics, Fiction
ratings_count: 95489
places: New York City, New York, New York (State)
publisher: Dover Publications