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Probably the most famous of Edith Wharton's novels, Ethan Frome contrasts sharply with
her usual ironic contemplation of the fashionable New York society to which she herself belonged and whose
strengths and weaknesses she understood so well. Ethan Frome is a keenly-etched portrait of the simple
inhabitants of a nineteenth-century New England village.

Ethan, a gaunt, patient New Englander, is a man tormented by a passionate love for his wife's young cousin, Mattie.
Restricted by the bonds of marriage and the fear of public condemnation, his desperate quest for happiness ultimately
leads to pain and despair. Ethan's story, with its tragic implications of what might have been, has had an irresistible
fascination for readers over the past century.

Edith Wharton (1862-1937) was born in New York and is best known for her stories of life among the upper-class society into which she was born. She was educated privately at home and in Europe. She married in 1885 and was divorced in 1912. In 1894, she began writing fiction, and her novel The House of Mirth (1905) established her as a leading writer. Her novels The Age of Innocence (1920) and Old New York (1924) were each awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and she was the first woman to receive that honor.