Summer, Edith Wharton wrote to Gaillard Lapsley, "is known to its author and her familars as the Hot Ethan." One of the first American novels to deal frankly with a young woman's sexual awakening, it was a publishing sensation when it appeared in 1917, praised by Joseph Conrad, Howard Sturgis, and Percy Lubbock, and... read more »
From her vacation to the Gulf of Mexico to her return to New Orleans, Edna Pontellier, the wife of Léonce and mother of two boys, embarks on an emotionally fraught journey to discover love and self-fulfillment. Her relationships with her husband, with LeBrun and with Mademoiselle Reisz lead to a battle with... read more »
Henry James' celebrated novel about a passionate New England suffragette, her displaced southern gentleman cousin, and a charismatic young woman whose loyalty they both wished to possess goes so directly to the heart of sexual politics that it speaks to us with a voice as fresh and as vital as when the book was... read more »
Lush with religious and metaphysical imagery, this is the story of three generations of the Brangwen family, set against the decline of the rural English midlands. It peers into a family's sexual mores, exposing the sexual dynamics of marriage and physical love. D.H. Lawrence explores the lives of three generations... read more »
Ulysses, one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, has had a profound influence on modern fiction. In a series of episodes covering the course of a single day, 16 June 1904, the novel traces the movements of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus through the streets of Dublin. Each episode has its own literary... read more »
A sequel to Lawrence's earlier novel The Rainbow, it continues the story of the Brangwen sisters in the coal-mining town of Beldover. Based in part on Lawrence's own stormy marriage to German aristocrat Frieda von Richthofen, the tale is charged with intense feelings and psychological insights as it focuses on the... read more »