Classics, Contemporary, Literary 

First published in 1911, Ethan Frome is widely regarded as Edith Wharton's most revealing novel and her finest achievement in fiction. Set in the bleak, barren winter landscape of New England, it is the tragic tale of a simple man, bound to the demands of his farm and his tyrannical, sickly wife, Zeena, and driven by his star-crossed love for Zeena's young cousin, Mattie Silver. "In its spare, chilling creation of rural isolation, hardscrabble poverty and wintry landscape," writes Alfred Kazin in his afterword, "Ethan Frome overwhelms the reader as a drama of irresistible necessity." An exemplary work of literary realism in setting and character, Ethan From stands as one of the great classics of twentieth-century American literature.

Edith Wharton was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize. Born in 1862 into one of New York's older and richer families, she was educated here and abroad. Her works include The House of Mirth, A Mother's Recompense, The Glimpses of the Moon and The Reef. As a keen observer and chronicler of society, she is without peer. She died in France in 1937.

Taken from the back cover.