Old New York Four Novellas, Edith Wharton
List: $14.99 | Sale: $10.50
Club: $7.49

Old New York: Four Novellas
False Dawn; The Old Maid; The Spark; New Year's Day

Author: Edith Wharton

Narrator: Nathan Osgood, Katherine Fenton

Unabridged: 9 hr 56 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: SNR Audio

Published: 01/01/2024


Synopsis

Spanning four decades in the mid-nineteenth century, the interconnected novellas of Old New York lay out the complex and inscrutable codes, customs, and taboos of New York society in classic Wharton style. False Dawn (1840s): Mr. Halston Raycie sends his son Lewis to Europe to buy art, as Mr. Raycie aims to ascend to the upper crust of society by means of a well-respected art collection. But when Lewis returns from Europe with daring pieces by artists unknown to the New York socialites and tastemakers, his appalled father disinherits him, only to discover, too late, the wisdom of his son's intuition. The Old Maid (1850s): The best known of the four novellas, follows the life of Tina, a young woman caught between the mother who adopted her--the beautiful, upstanding Delia--and her true mother, her plain, unmarried aunt Charlotte, who gave Tina up to provide her with a socially acceptable life. The three women live quietly together until Tina's wedding day, when Delia's and Charlotte's hidden jealousies rush to the surface. The Spark (1860s): Mr. Hayley Delane recounts how his life has turned out since he was wounded in the Civil War, where, during his rehabilitation, he chances to meet a certain American poet whose memory stays with him all his life.
New Year's Day (1870s): Mrs. Lizzie Hazeldean's suspected affair with the unmarried Henry Prest is the center of scandal and gossip in the city, but the true nature of the relationship is not what it may seem.

Author Bio

American author Edith Wharton is distinguished for her stories and ironic novels about early-twentieth-century, upper-class Americans and Europeans. Although Ethan Frome, a stark New England tragedy, is probably her best-known work, she earned recognition and popularity for her "society novels," in which she analyzed the changing scene of fashionable American life in contrast to that of Old Europe.

Wharton's literary talent was epitomized in her novel The Age of Innocence, for which she won a Pulitzer Prize, and which was made into a film in 1993. Other major works of hers include The House of Mirth, The Reef, and The Custom of the Country. She published more than forty volumes, including novels, short stories, poems, essays, travel books, and memoirs.

Born Edith Newbold Jones into a wealthy and socially prominent New York family in 1862, she was educated privately by European governesses both in the United States and abroad. In 1885, Edith reluctantly married Edward Wharton, a Boston banker, who was twelve years her senior. The marriage ended in divorce twenty-eight years later.

Wharton spent long periods of time in Europe and settled in France from 1910 until her death. Her familiarity with continental languages and European settings influenced many of her works. She became a literary hostess to young writers, including Henry James, at her Paris apartment and her garden home in the south of France. During World War I, she was a war correspondent, ran a workroom for unemployed but skilled woman workers, and took charge of 600 Belgian child refugees who had to leave their orphanage at the time of the German advance.

Wharton was also active in fund-raising activities and participated in the production of an illustrated anthology of war writings by prominent authors and artists of the period. The French government awarded her the Cross of the Legion of Honor in 1915. Wharton died in 1937.

Reviews