The House of Mirth captured the attention of a large portion of the reading public when it was published in a serial version for most of 1905 and then as a book in October of that year. Edith Wharton's story of Lily Bart topped the American bestseller list for four months and sealed the author's reputation as one of the major English-language fiction writers of her generation. Each of the four articles collected in this New Essays volume makes distinctive new claims for the historical, critical, and theoretical significance of Wharton's seminal work.
