> Skip to content
Play sample
  • Published: 7 December 2011
  • ISBN: 9780451531315
  • Imprint: Signet
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $16.99

Ethan Frome





The new paperback series: Penguin English Library

A masterwork of American literature from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Age of Innocence.

A marked departure from Edith Wharton’s usual ironic contemplation of the fashionable New York society to which she belonged, Ethan Frome is a sharply etched portrait of the simple inhabitants of a nineteenth-century New England village. The protagonist, Ethan Frome, is a man tormented by a passionate love for his ailing wife’s young cousin. Trapped by the bonds of marriage and the fear of public condemnation, he is ultimately destroyed by that which offers him the greatest chance at happiness.

Like The House of Mirth and many of Edith Wharton’s other novels, Ethan Frome centers on the power of local convention to smother the growth of the individual. Written with stark simplicity, this powerful and tragic novel has long been considered one of Wharton’s greatest works.

  • Published: 7 December 2011
  • ISBN: 9780451531315
  • Imprint: Signet
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $16.99

Other books in the series

Emma
Persuasion
The Black Tulip
The Lady of the Camellias
On Sparta
Love
Annals
Military Dispatches

Also by Edith Wharton

See all