Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

ETHAN FROME is a novel published in 1911 by the Pulitzer Prize-winning American author Edith Wharton. It is set in the fictitious town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. The novel was adapted into a film, Ethan Frome, in 1993.

ETHAN FROME is set in the fictional New England town of Starkfield, where a visiting engineer tells the story of his encounter with Ethan Frome, a man with a history of thwarted dreams and desires. The accumulated longing of Frome ends in an ironic turn of events. His initial impressions are based on his observations of Frome going about his mundane tasks in Starkfield, and something about him catches the eye and curiosity of the visitor, but no one in the town seems interested in revealing many details about the man or his history-or perhaps they are not able to. The narrator ultimately finds himself in the position of staying overnight at Frome's house in order to escape a winter storm, and from there he observes Frome and his private circumstances, which he shares and which triggers other people in town to be more forthcoming with their own knowledge and impressions.

Ethan Frome was written while Edith Wharton was living at The Mount, her home in Lenox, Massachusetts. Wharton likely based the story on an accident that she had heard about in 1904 in Lenox, Massachusetts. Five people total were involved in the real-life accident, four girls and one boy.

a compelling and haunting story. -The New York Times

.after all, the tragedy unveiled to us is social rather than personal. Ethan Frome is to me above all else a judgment on that system which fails to redeem such villages as Mrs. Wharton's Starkfield. -Literary critic and author Edwin Bjorkman

The upper stratum of New York society into which Edith Wharton was born in 1862 provided her with an abundance of material as a novelist but did not encourage her growth as an artist. Educated by tutors and governesses, she was raised for only one career: marriage. But her marriage, in 1885, to Edward Wharton was an emotional disappointment, if not a disaster. She suffered the first of a series of nervous breakdowns in 1894. In spite of the strain of her marriage, or perhaps because of it, she began to write fiction and published her first story in 1889. Her first published book was a guide to interior decorating, but this was followed by several novels and story collections. They were written while the Whartons lived in Newport and New York, traveled in Europe, and built their grand home, the Mount, in Lenox, Massachusetts. In Europe, she met Henry James, who became her good friend, traveling companion, and the sternest but most careful critic of her fiction. The House of Mirth (1905) was both a resounding critical success and a bestseller, as was Ethan Frome (1911). In 1913 the Whartons were divorced, and Edith took up permanent residence in France. Her subject, however, remained America, especially the moneyed New York of her youth. Her great satiric novel, The Custom of the Country was published in 1913 and The Age of Innocence won her the Pulitzer Prize in 1921. In her later years, she enjoyed the admiration of a new generation of writers, including Sinclair Lewis and F. Scott Fitzgerald. In all, she wrote some 30 books, including an autobiography, A Backward Glance (1934). She died at her villa near Paris in 1937.

Regina Barreca is a professor of English and feminist theory at the University of Connecticut. She is the editor of seven books, including The Penguin Book of Women's Humor, and the author of four others. She writes frequently for the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and Hartford Courant.

Judith P. Saunders is a writer known for Reading Edith Wharton Through a Darwinian Lens: Evolutionary Biological Issues in Her Fiction, Lost Partners, The Age of Innocence, and more. She is a professor of American Literature at Marist College in New York.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781453886939
ISBN 10	1453886931
Title	Ethan Frome
Author	Edith Wharton
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Year published	2010-10-17
Number of pages	108
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.