"A BLINDING, RAW FORCE OF PRIMITIVE BEAUTY": EDITH WHARTON'S THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY

WHARTON, Edith. The Custom of the Country. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1913. Octavo, original gilt-stamped red cloth. $650.

First edition of one of Wharton's best novels.

"In some ways her most successful work, in that it draws on all her strengths as a novelist, especially as satirist and social chronicler… Custom is filled with penetrating satire, acute observations of the new Gilded Age, forcefully drawn characters, and international settings charged with a new power and direction… Undine is a creature of glaring light, a blinding, raw force of primitive beauty" (Lowe, 391-92). Serialized earlier the same year, in revised form, in Scribner's Magazine. Garrison A21.I.a. Melish 48. Bookplate. Owner signature.

Interior generally fine, faint soiling to cloth, minor rubbing to spine ends, and spine leaning slightly. A near-fine copy.