The Children [Paperback]

A bestseller when it was first published in 1928, Edith Wharton'sThe Childrenis a comic, bittersweet novel about the misadventures of a bachelor and a band of precocious children. The seven Wheater children, stepbrothers and stepsisters grown weary of being shuttled from parent to parent like bundles, are eager for their parents' latest reconciliation to last. A chance meeting between the children and the solitary forty-six-year-old Martin Boyne leads to a series of unforgettable encounters. Among the colorful cast of characters are the Wheater adults, who play out their own comedy of marital errors; the flamboyant Marchioness of Wrench; and the vivacious fifteen-year-old Judith Wheater, who captures Martin's heart. With deft humor and touching drama, Wharton portrays a world of intrigues and infidelities, skewering the manners and mores of Americans abroad.America's most famous woman of letters, and the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize,Edith Whartonwas born into one of the last leisured class families in New York City, as she put it, in 1862. Educated privately, she was married to Edward Wharton in 1885, and for the next few years, they spent their time in the high society of Newport (Rhode Island), then Lenox (Massachusetts) and Europe. It was in Europe that Wharton first met Henry James, who was to have a profound and lasting influence on her life and work. Wharton's first published book was a work of nonfiction, in collaboration with Ogden Codman,The Decoration of Houses(1897), but from early on, her marriage had been a source of distress, and she was advised by her doctor to write fiction to relieve her nervous tension. Wharton's first short stories appeared inScribner's Magazine,and though she published several volumes of fiction around the turn of the century, includingThe Greater Inclination(1899),The Touchstone(1900),Crucial Instances(1901),The Valley of Decision(1902),Sanctuary(1903), lc)