The House of Mirth

Edith Wharton was a natural story-teller. As plots do in real life, hers flow directly from character. Her prose is so effortlessly elegant that you're rarely aware as they purl by that the sentences are so pretty...I was born after the heavy spade work of female emancipation was done. But 100 years ago, Edith Wharton's drive, independence, wilfulness and autodidactic mastery of the English language were extraordinary, and I bashfully claim her as a kindred spirit -- Lionel Shriver * Guardian *
A cautionary tale of social disaster, told with wit and elan * Independent *
Like Henry James, Wharton has a wonderful gift of revealing the inner life of her characters while also documenting the elegance and hypocrisy of high society...the accumulation of desolation in the final three chapters reduces me to tears -- Jonathan Bate * Sunday Telegraph *
[Edith Wharton was] an ambitious, brilliant and industrious woman who created "her own personal and professional revolution" * Sunday Times *
Edith Wharton's 1905 novel gave literature one of its most complicated tragic heroines * Independent *