The reef
By: Edith Wharton ; edited with an introduction and notes by Stephen Orgel.
Contributors: Orgel, Stephen.
Series: Oxford world's classics
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Oxford; New York
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 293
ISBN-13: 9780192823199
Subjects: Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Americans -- France -- Fiction; France -- Fiction
Description: When The Reef appeared in 1912, reviewers found Edith Wharton's novel of American expatriates in France sordid and even shocking. George Darrow, an American diplomat, is in love with the recently widowed Anna Leath. On his way to visit her in France, he finds himself accompanying Sophy Viner, a young American he has briefly met in the past, on her way to Paris. A minutely rendered anatomy of social ambiguity, the implications of this Parisian prologue inform the remainder of the novel, as Darrow's, Anna's, and Sophy's lives become increasingly and intricately interdependent. Obliquely but intensely autobiographical, written following the dissolution of her marriage and her move from America to France, The Reef explores Wharton's ambivalent sense of both her newly adopted country and her unexpectedly awakened sexuality. A brilliant and compelling work, it is both a neglected and genuinely distinguished novel and a revealing document in modern sexual history. - Back cover.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [xxv].
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: Note on the text; title: Select bibliography; title: A chronology of Edith Wharton; title: The Reef; title: Explanatory notes