Books

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1911. First edition, first issue with “wearily” in perfect type on penultimate line of page 135 and with four pages of publisher’s advertisements at rear, of Wharton’s greatest tragic story, a “grim tale of a bud of romance ice-bound and turned into a frozen horror in the frigid setting of a New England winter landscape” (The New York Times). Octavo, original cloth, gilt titles to the spine and front panel, gilt topstain. In near fine condition contemporary name to the front free endpaper. A very nice example. “There are only three or four American novelists who can be thought of as major,” noted Gore Vidal, “and Edith Wharton is one.” Her Ethan Frome “shows a marked departure from the ironic contemplation of aristocratic mores… the central problem is that of the barriers imposed by local conventions upon an individual whose happiness depends on rising above them” (Hart 813).

Ethan Frome is a novel published in 1911 by the American author Edith Wharton. It is set in the fictitious town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. The novel was adapted into a film in 1993. The story is a frame narrative concerning an unnamed narrator who tells the story based on an account from observations at Frome's house when he had to stay there during a winter storm. It is a classic of American literature, depicting the struggle between individual desire and social expectations.