Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious and hypochondriac wife, Zeena. But when Zeena's vivacious cousin enters their household as a 'hired girl', Ethan finds himself obsessed with her and with the possibilities for happiness she comes to represent.
Edith Newbold Jones (Edith Wharton) (1862-1937) was born in New York City during the American Civil War. She enjoyed a diverse and very successful career as interior and garden designer, short story writer and celebrated novelist, and was the first woman to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Wharton found inspiration for Ethan Frome's tragic denouement in an actual event in Lenox, Massachusetts, one of the victims of which she met personally.
The House of Mirth is also published in the Penguin English Library.
