The Custom of the Country: New York Public Library Collector's Edition

Edith Wharton

ISBN 10: 0385487231 / ISBN 13: 9780385487238

Published by Doubleday, 1998

About this Item

First Edition, First Printing. Not price-clipped. Published by Doubleday, 1998. Octavo. Hardcover. Book is like new. Dust jacket is like new.100% positive feedback. 30 day money back guarantee. NEXT DAY SHIPPING! Excellent customer service. Please email with any questions. All books packed carefully and ship with free delivery confirmation/tracking. All books come with free bookmarks. Ships from Sag Harbor, New York.

Seller Inventory # 420197

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Custom of the Country: New York Public Library Collector's Edition
• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication Date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385487231
• ISBN 13: 9780385487238
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Like New
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included

About this title

Synopsis

With the publication of this controversial novel, Edith Wharton leveled her most biting critique at the limitations that her society placed upon the ambitious woman.

The Custom of the Country--which Harold Bloom, among others, considers her strongest achievement--takes its name from Fletcher and Massinger's Jacobean play about a medieval custom in which the feudal lord had a right to use the body of any common woman in his domain, either for his own pleasure or for money by prostituting her on her wedding night. In Wharton's American revision, it is the woman herself who ruthlessly sells herself to whatever man she believes can provide her with the success she desires. Undine Spragg is a magnificent antiheroine, viciously and precisely rendered by the author.

With photographs by Alvin Langdon Coburn and drawings by Charles Dana Gibson, this Collector's Edition evokes the atmosphere of nineteenth-century New York. It also brings us closer to the author herself, with letters in her hand and other archival traces of her life from the special collections of The New York Public Library.

About the Author

Diane Johnson is the author of ten novels, most recently Le Mariage and Le Divorce, two books of essays, two biographies, and the screenplay for Stanley Kubrick’s classic film The Shining. She has been a finalist four times for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Awards.


From the Trade Paperback edition.