The House of Mirth

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905. First Edition. Hard Cover. Good/No Jacket. 0x0x0. Wenzell, A.B. First edition, first state (no ads following text). Lacks scarce jacket. Spine faded, boards rubbed with faint ring stain on front, hinges weakening, front free endpaper absent. 1905 Hard Cover. 532, [6] pp. 8vo. Red cloth, gilt titles and top edge. The popular second novel by the author who later became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize (1921). Originally serialized in Scribner's Magazine, its success was described by Charles Scribner as 'the most rapid sale of any book ever published by Scribner' (Benstock, A Critical History of The House of Mirth). This catapulted Wharton's career as a writer, and her works influenced authors such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sinclair Lewis. "A literary sensation when it was published by Scribners in 1905, The House of Mirth quickly established Edith Wharton as the most important American woman of letters in the twentieth century. The first American novel to provide a devastatingly accurate portrait of New York's aristocracy, it is the story of the beautiful and beguiling Lily Bart and her ill-fated attempt to rise to the heights of a heartless society in which, ultimately, she has no part. From the staid conventionality of Old New York to the forced conviviality of the French Riviera, from the drawing room of Gus Trenor's Bellomont to the dreary resort of a downtown boardinghouse, Wharton created her "first full-scale survey," as her biographer R.W.B. Lewis put it, "of the comedie humaine, American style." A brilliantly satiric yet sensitive exploration of manners and morality, The House of Mirth marked Wharton's transformation from an amateur into a professional writer and figures among her most important works.