Complete and unabridged, with 53 full-page plates by Henri Matisse, Childe Hassam and William Henry Hope. A beautiful woman with expensive habits and no capital spends eleven years failing to marry money, and every step down is taken for a reason that looked like principle at the time. Wharton knew the New York she was describing from inside and published it while still living in it. It made her famous. Fifty-three plates, from Childe Hassam and Edgar Degas among others, catch the gaslight promenades and drawing-room interiors of the world Lily Bart is priced out of.

Edith Wharton (1862-1937) was an American novelist born into old New York society and resident in France from middle age. She was the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, for The Age of Innocence, and was decorated for her relief work in the First World War. Her works include The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome, The Custom of the Country, and The Age of Innocence.