The Custom of the Country(国家的习俗)
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品牌: Edith Wharton
基本信息·出版社：Bantam Classics
·页码：480 页
·出版日期：1991年
·ISBN：0553213938
·条形码：9780553213935
·装帧：平装
·正文语种：英语
·外文书名：国家的习俗
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内容简介First published in 1913, Edith Wharton’sThe Custom of the Countryis a scathing novel of ambition featuring one of the most ruthless heroines in literature. Undine Spragg is as unscrupulous as she is magnetically beautiful. Her rise to the top of New York’s high society from the nouveau riche provides a provocative commentary on the upwardly mobile and the aspirations that eventually cause their ruin. One of Wharton’s most acclaimed works,The Custom of the Countryis a stunning indictment of materialism and misplaced values that is as powerful today for its astute observations about greed and power as when it was written nearly a century ago.
作者简介The 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.
Her 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.The House of Mirth(1905) was both a resounding critical success and a bestseller, as wasEthan Frome(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,The Custom of the Countrywas published in 1913 andThe Age of Innocencewon her the Pulitzer Prize in 1921.
In 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.A Backwards Glance(1934). She died at her villa near Paris in 1937.
专业书评FromAudioFile
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. Barbara Caruso can't make Undine sympathetic; no one could. But she makes her believable, quite miracle enough, and renders Undine's slash-and-burn progress toward what she thinks will make her happy utterly absorbing. B.G. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine--Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Jack Goodstein, Allreaders.com
Wharton creates a story of a beautiful young woman--This text refers to thePaperbackedition.
Review
"Edith Wharton's finest achievement."—Elizabeth Hardwick
Review
"Edith Wharton's finest achievement."
--Elizabeth Hardwick
From the Trade Paperback edition.