Ethan Frome

New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911. FIRST EDITION, FIRST STATE. Red cloth with gilt title and author on front board and spine; gilt top edge, bottom and fore-edges untrimmed. Preserved in a clamshell box, spine label; an excellent copy. First edition, first printing, with “wearily” unbattered on p. 135. Novella featuring the story of Ethan Frome’s grim life and tragic accident in a bleak Massachusetts farm town through an extended flashback. A realistic social criticism of early twentieth century America, this tale provides insightful commentary into the contemporary economic and cultural realities of American suffering.

Wharton (1862-1937) was a novelist known for producing copious novellas, poems, and books on travel and design in the latter part of her life, many of which are believed to be autobiographical. Her work has been praised for its use of dramatic irony, utilizing her station in the upper classes of society to compose incisive and critical stories of life in the first half of the twentieth century. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature and was the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1921.