Ethan Frome
By: Edith Wharton ; edited with an introduction by Elaine Showalter.
Contributors: Showalter, Elaine.
Series: The world's classics
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 122
Subjects: Triangles (Interpersonal relations) -- Fiction; Accident victims -- Fiction; Married people -- Fiction; Rural poor -- Fiction; New England -- Fiction
Genres: Fiction.
Description: Set against the bleak winter landscape of New England, Ethan Frome tells the story of a poor farmer, lonely and downtrodden, his wife Zeena, and her cousin, the enchanting Mattie Silver. In the playing out of this short novel's powerful and engrossing drama, Edith Wharton constructed her least characteristic and most celebrated book. In its unyielding and shocking pessimism, its bleak demonstration of tragic waste, it is a masterpiece of psychological and emotional realism.

In her introduction the distinguished critic Elaine Showalter discusses the background to the novel's composition and the reasons for its enduring success.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
Originally published: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1911.