Books with title House of Mirth

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The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton, is a novel about New York socialite Lily Bart attempts to secure a husband and a place in rich society. It is one of the first novels of manners in American literature. Like many Wharton novels, The House of Mirth examines the conflict between rigid social expectation and personal desire. The book received an enthusiastic review in the New York Times upon its original publication, which called it "a novel of remarkable power," and which read in part "Its varied elements are harmoniously blended, and the discriminating reader who has completed the whole story in a protracted sitting or two must rise from it with the conviction that there are no parts of it which do not properly and essentially belong to the whole. Its descriptive passages have verity and charm, it has the saving grace of humor, its multitude of personages, as we have said, all have the semblance of life."

The House of Mirth tells the story of Lily Bart, a well-born but impoverished woman belonging to New York City's high society around the turn of the twentieth century. She is a stunning beauty who, though raised and educated to marry well both socially and economically, is reaching her 29th year, an age when her youthful blush is drawing to a close and her marital prospects are becoming ever more limited. The novel follows Lily's slow two-year social descent from privilege to a tragically lonely existence on the margins of society.Before publication as a book on October 14, 1905, The House of Mirth was serialized in Scribner's Magazine beginning in January 1905. It attracted a readership among housewives and businessmen alike. Charles Scribner wrote Wharton in November 1905 that the novel was showing "the most rapid sale of any book ever published by Scribner." By the end of December sales had reached 140,000 copies. Wharton's royalties were valued at more than half a million dollars in today's currency. The commercial and critical success of The House of Mirth solidified Wharton's reputation as a major novelist.This cloth-bound book includes a Victorian inspired dust-jacket, and is limited to 100 copies.