A literary sensation when it was published by Scribners in 1905, The
House of Mirth quickly established Edith Wharton as the most important
American woman of letters in the twentieth century. The first American
novel to provide a devastatingly accurate portrait of New York's
aristocracy, it is the story of the beautiful and beguiling Lily Bart
and her ill-fated attempt to rise to the heights of a heartless society
in which, ultimately, she has no part.