Ethan Frome

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1911. Hardcover. Fine. First Issue, with top edge gilt, one of 2500 copies ("wearily" on the penultimate line p.135 is unbroken in this copy, but the word appears in both states, broken and perfect, in copies with gilt top edges and without and is thus not an indicator of the first issue). Small 8vo: [6],195,[5, four of which advertisements]pp. Publisher's crimson cloth, spine and upper board stamped gilt, fore- and bottom edges untrimmed, title page in red and black. A superb copy, bright, square and tight. Garrison A 19.I.a. Brenni 5. Johnson, High Spots, pp 76-77. Auchincloss, The Edith Wharton Reader, p. 21. Originally serialized in Scribner's Magazine. By 1910, Teddy Wharton's mental health was fast deteriorating, and his embezzlement of money from Edith's trust fund initiated the end of the Whartons' marriage, as well as Edith's American life. She leased an apartment on the Left Bank, in Paris, where she would remain until 1920. The Mount, her beloved Berkshires retreat, was sold in 1911, and "henceforth her life would be wholly a European one. . . It is somehow fitting that [Edith Frome], her frosty New England tragedy of a damaged New England farmer devastatingly crippled physically and emotionally by a disastrous love-affair, coincided with Wharton's own sundering of bonds to that same landscape and to a now-hopeless marriage which formally ended in 1913." (Literary Encyclopedia) "[I]t is surely among her best. When I think of it [Ethan Frome], I visualize a small painting, perfectly executed to the last detail." (Auchincloss) N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition, carefully preserved in archival, removable polypropylene sleeves. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed.