The Custom of the Country (Modern Library Torchbearers) (Torchbearers) (New York Public Library collector's edition)

by Edith Wharton

Linda Wagner-Martin (Notes) and Anita Brookner (Introduction)

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Edith Wharton's novels of manners seem to grow in stature as time passes. Here she draws a beautiful social climber, Undine Sprague, who is a monster of selfishness and honestly doesn't know it. Although the worlds she wants to conquer have vanished, Undine herself is amazingly recognizable. She marries well above herself twice and both times fails to recognize her husbands' strengths of character or the weakness of her own, and it is they, not she, who pay the price.
  • ISBN10 0143039709
  • ISBN13 9780143039709
  • Publish Date 28 September 2006 (first published 1 January 1965)
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country GB
  • Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
  • Imprint Penguin Classics