Set against the bleak winter landscape of New England, Ethan Frome is the story of a poor farmer, lonely and downtrodden, his wife Zeena, and her cousin, the enchanting Mattie Silver. In the playing out of this short novel's powerful and engrossing drama, Edith Wharton constructed her least characteristic and most celebrated book. In her Introduction, the distinguished critic Elaine Showalter discusses the background to the novel's composition and the reasons for its enduring success. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Preface

Acknowledgments

A Note on the Text

Introduction to the 1922 Edition

The Text of Ethan Frome

Backgrounds and Contexts

 Edith Wharton·"The Writing of Ethan Frome"

 Edith Wharton·A Backward Glance

 Edith Wharton·[On Ethan Frome's Dramatization]

LETTERS ON ETHAN FROME ( 191O——1912)

 Edith Wharton to Elizabeth Frelinghuysen Davis Lodge(June 20 [191o])

 Edith Wharton to Bernard Berenson (January 4 [1911])

 Edith Wharton to Bernard Berenson (May 16 [1911])

 Edith Wharton to W. Morton Fullerton (September 22 [1911])

 Edith Wharton to Mary Cadwalader Jones (September 23, 1911)

 Edith Wharton to W. Morton Fullerton (October 16 [1911])

 Edith Wharton to Charles Scribner (November 27 [1911])

 Henry James to Edith Wharton (October 25, 1911)

 The Berkshire Evening Eagle·["Fatal Coasting Accident"]

 Scott Marshall·[Edith Wharton and Kate Spencer]

 R. W. B. Lewis·[Ethan Frome Biographically]

 E. H. Van Deusen, M.D.·Observations on a Form of Nervous Prostration

 Carroll Smith-Rosenberg·The Hysterical Woman: Sex Roles and Role Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America

 Carroll D. Wright·From The Working Girls of Boston

Criticism

 CONTEMPORARY REVIEWS

New York Times Book Review·["Three Lives in Supremc Torture"]

Outlook·["Artistic Workmanship"]

The Nation·["As One Writes of Home"]

The Hartford Daily Courant·["Not a Study of Life or Character or Locality"]

Saturday Review·["Things Too Terrible... To Be Told"]

Frederic Taber Cooper·["Art for Art's Sake"]

Bookman·["Inevitability of a Great Greek Tragedy"]

Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant·Idealized New England

 MODERN CRITICISM

Lionel Trilling·The Morality of Inertia

Cynthia Griffin Wolff·[The Narrator's Vision]

Elizabeth Ammons·[Ethan Frome as Fairy Tale]

Judith Fryer·[The Spaces of Ethan Frome]

Jean Frantz Blackall·Edith Wharton's Art of Ellipsis

Lev Raphael·From Edith Wharton's Prisoners of Shame

Candace Waid·["A Vision of Unrelenting Infertility"]

Edith Wharton: A Chronology

Selected Bibliography