In the brief, neatly crafted tales she loved to write she could take the most daring formal risks, and explore a range of themes she could not pursue in her novels. From the extravagantly supernatural to the sharply realistic, from the big taboo subjects like divorce to the subtlest little ironies of social life, nothing escaped her shrewd but sympathetic attention.
Yet in the end it is the characters that count. Whether in New York or Morocco; haunted by real ghosts or by more personal phantoms of cowardice, doubt or regret, a jostling crowd of diverse individuals throngs the pages of these stories, conjured in their comedies and tragedies, their weakness and their strength into vivid, unforgettable life.
The most comprehensive paperback edition available, with introduction and chronology of Wharton's life and times.
