The Custom of the Country

Front Cover
Simon and Schuster, 1997 - Fiction - 528 pages
“For my money, no literary antiheroine can best Undine.” —Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker

Edith Wharton’s compulsively readable 20th century classic about the conquests of Undine Spragg, the glamorous and insatiable social climber—now with a new introduction by Brandon Taylor.

Undine Spragg is beautiful—anyone in New York will admit to as much. But what is the point of beauty if no one can see you? The Spraggs left the Midwest in search of a glamorous life for their daughter. Now, cooped up in a gilded uptown hotel they can barely afford, they begin to fear their move to the big city was for naught. But Undine is determined. And Undine always gets her way.

What follows is a tactical climb to the pinnacle of affluence and early 20th-century high society that will amaze and mortify. Witty and devasting, The Custom of the Country is an astute comedy of manners and a scathing satire of upper-class life that bites to this day. More than a century after its original publication, Edith Wharton’s 1913 masterpiece remains an un-put-downable showcase for one of the most memorable, controversial anti-heroines in American literature.
 

Contents

Section 1
3
Section 2
16
Section 3
51
Section 4
82
Section 5
91
Section 6
101
Section 7
119
Section 8
133
Section 19
315
Section 20
335
Section 21
342
Section 22
351
Section 23
361
Section 24
369
Section 25
377
Section 26
389

Section 9
160
Section 10
201
Section 11
212
Section 12
233
Section 13
241
Section 14
261
Section 15
279
Section 16
287
Section 17
294
Section 18
308
Section 27
401
Section 28
409
Section 29
420
Section 30
432
Section 31
443
Section 32
452
Section 33
468
Section 34
493
Copyright

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About the author (1997)

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) was an American novelist—the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Age of Innocence in 1921—as well as a short story writer, playwright, designer, reporter, and poet. Her other works include Ethan Frome, The House of Mirth, and Roman Fever and Other Stories. Born into one of New York’s elite families, she drew upon her knowledge of upper-class aristocracy to realistically portray the lives and morals of the Gilded Age.

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