{"product_id":"summer-9780553214222","title":"Summer","description":"Considered by some to be her finest work, Edith Wharton's \u003cb\u003eSummer\u003c\/b\u003e created a sensation when first published in 1917, as it was one of the first novels to deal honestly with a young woman's sexual awakening. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eSummer\u003c\/b\u003e is the story of Charity Royall, a child of mountain moonshiners adopted by a family in a poor New England town, who has a passionate love affair with Lucius Harney, an educated man from the city. Wharton broke the conventions of women's romantic fiction by making Charity a thoroughly independent modern woman--in touch with her emotions and sexuality, yet kept from love and the larger world she craves by the overwhelming pressures of heredity and society. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003ePraised for its realism and honesty by such writers as Joseph Conrad and Henry James and compared to Flaubert's \u003cb\u003eMadame Bovary\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e, \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eSummer\u003c\/b\u003e remains as fresh and powerful a novel today as when it was first written.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe upper stratum of New York society into which Edith Wharton was born in 1862 provided her with an abundance of material as a novelist but did not encourage her growth as an artist. Educated by tutors and governesses, she was raised for only one career: marriage. But her marriage, in 1885, to Edward Wharton was an emotional disappointment, if not a disaster. She suffered the first of a series of nervous breakdowns in 1894. In spite of the strain of her marriage, or perhaps because of it, she began to write fiction and published her first story in 1889. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eHer first published book was a guide to interior decorating, but this was followed by several novels and story collections. They were written while the Whartons lived in Newport and New York, traveled in Europe, and built their grand home, The Mount, in Lenox, Massachusetts. In Europe, she met Henry James, who became her good friend, traveling companion, and the sternest but most careful critic of her fiction. \u003cb\u003eThe House of Mirth \u003c\/b\u003e(1905) was both a resounding critical success and a bestseller, as was \u003cb\u003eEthan Frome \u003c\/b\u003e(1911). In 1913 the Whartons were divorced, and Edith took up permanent residence in France. Her subject, however, remained America, especially the moneyed New York of her youth. Her great satiric novel, \u003cb\u003eThe Custom of the Country \u003c\/b\u003ewas published in 1913 and \u003cb\u003eThe Age of Innocence\u003c\/b\u003e won her the Pulitzer Prize in 1921. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn her later years, she enjoyed the admiration of a new generation of writers, including Sinclair Lewis and F. Scott Fitzgerald. In all, she wrote some thirty books, including an autobiography. \u003ci\u003e A Backwards Glance\u003c\/i\u003e (1934). She died at her villa near Paris in 1937.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Bantam Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50900885897490,"sku":"9780553214222","price":4.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_b21f538f-1c51-4b8e-99fb-37504902bb6f.jpg?v=1748523160","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/summer-9780553214222","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}