Ethan Frome
Edited by Elaine Showalter
Published on 4. June 1998
Book
Paperback/Softback
160 pages
978-0-19-283496-6 (ISBN)
Description
`It was not so much his great height that marked him ... it was the careless powerful look that he had, in spite of a lameness checking each step like the jerk of a chain.'
Set against the bleak winter landscape of New England, Ethan Frome tells the story of a poor farmer, lonely and downtrodden, his wife Zeena, and her cousin, the enchanting Mattie Silver. In the playing out of this short novel's powerful and engrossing drama, Edith Wharton constructed her least characteristic and most celebrated book. In its unyielding and shocking pessimism, its bleak demonstration of tragic waste, it is a masterpiece of psychological and emotional realism.
In her introduction the distinguished critic Elaine Showalter discusses the background to the novel's composition and the reasons for its enduring success.
Set against the bleak winter landscape of New England, Ethan Frome tells the story of a poor farmer, lonely and downtrodden, his wife Zeena, and her cousin, the enchanting Mattie Silver. In the playing out of this short novel's powerful and engrossing drama, Edith Wharton constructed her least characteristic and most celebrated book. In its unyielding and shocking pessimism, its bleak demonstration of tragic waste, it is a masterpiece of psychological and emotional realism.
In her introduction the distinguished critic Elaine Showalter discusses the background to the novel's composition and the reasons for its enduring success.
Reviews / Votes
with each volume having an introduction by an acknowledged expert, and exhaustive notes, the World's Classics are surely the most desirable series and, all-round, the best value for money * Oxford Times * This love story has an emotional intensity made all the more poignant by the inarticulate reticence of Wharton's characters - a menage a trois consisting of Frome, his querulous wife and her young girl cousin. With quiet assurance, Wharton conveys passion, malaise and tragedy with memorable impact. * Sophia Sackville-West, Evening Standard (London) * Ethan Frome is one of Edith Wharton's most famous novels and rightly so. It is exquisitely written by an author with remarkable observation and imagination. Ethan Frome is a novel which extinguishes hope and blows away happiness but it is so powerful as an analysis of waste that it is nothing short of a masterpiece. * Madeleine Burton, Herts Advertiser *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Oxford University Press
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 197 mm
Width: 129 mm
Thickness: 8 mm
Weight
135 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-283496-6 (9780192834966)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Edith Wharton | Elaine Showalter
Ethan Frome
Book
11/2008
Oxford University Press
€9.00
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