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. From the library of Michael Sadleir with his bookplate to the pastedown. Sadleir was a British publisher, novelist, book collector, and bibliographer. Sadleir began to work for the publishing firm of Constable & Co. in 1912, becoming a director in 1920, and chairman in 1954. In 1920 as editor of Bliss and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield for Constable he insisted on censoring sections of her short story Je ne parle pas français which show the cynical attitudes to love and sex of the…

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.