Edith Wharton
Overview
“What Lily craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath.”
The House of Mirth is the second published novel of American author Edith Wharton, released in 1905. Set at the end of the 19th century, the story follows Lily Bart, a well-born but impoverished young woman belonging to New York City's high society. Wharton creates a portrait of a stunning beauty who, though raised and educated to marry well, is reaching her 29th year, an age when her marital prospects are becoming ever more limited.
The House of Mirth traces Lily's slow two-year social descent from privilege to a tragically lonely existence on the margins of society. In the words of one scholar, Wharton uses Lily as an attack on "an irresponsible, grasping and morally corrupt upper class." A finely nuanced, enduring literary classic, and an unmissable read.
