The House of Mirth

“Can you imagine looking into your glass some morning and seeing a disfigurement – some hideous change that has come to you while you slept? Well, I seem to myself like that – I can’t bear to see myself in my own thoughts – I hate ugliness, you know – I’ve always turned from it – but I can’t explain to you – you wouldn’t understand.” (I. xiv)

The House of Mirth, 1905

Edith Wharton

The House of Mirth (1905) is a novel by Edith Wharton. First published in 1905, the novel is Wharton’s first important work of fiction. It sold 140,000 copies between October and the end of December, and added to Wharton’s existing fortune. The House of Mirth was written while Edith Wharton lived at Tht,e Moun her home in Lenox, Massachusetts.

Although The House of Mirth is written in the style of a novel of manners, set against the backdrop of the 1890s New York aristocracy, it is considered American literary naturalism. Wharton places her tragic heroine, Lily Bart, in a society that she describes as a “hot-house of traditions and conventions.  Source Wikipedia

Original Illustrations (1905)

“She felt a stealing sense of fatigue as she walked; the sparkle had died out of her, and the taste of life was stale on her lips. She hardly knew what she had been seeking, or why the failure to find it had so blotted the light from her sky: she was only aware of a vague sense of failure, of an inner isolation deeper than the loneliness about her.”
Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth

Edith Wharton, 1905