Ethan Frome

Ethan Frome

Summary

Penguin Classics presents Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome, adapted for audio and available as a digital download as part of the Penguin English Library series. Read by Nathan Osgood.

'He seemed a part of the mute melancholy landscape, an incarnation of its frozen woe, with all that was warm and sentient in him fast bound below the surface'

Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious and hypochondriac wife, Zeena. But when Zeena's vivacious cousin enters their household as a 'hired girl', Ethan finds himself obsessed with her and with the possibilities for happiness she comes to represent. In one of American fiction's finest and most intense narratives, Edith Wharton moves this ill-starred trio towards their tragic destinies.

Part of a series of vintage recordings taken from the Penguin Archives. Affordable, collectable, quality productions - perfect for on-the-go listening.

About the author

Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton was born in New York City on January 24, 1862. Edith married Teddy Wharton, who was 12 years older. They lived a life of relative ease with homes in New York, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. Edith became a prolific writer and produced over 40 books in 40 years.
Edith divorced Teddy in 1912, having no immediate heirs, and never married again. She was the first woman awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, an honorary Doctorate of Letters from Yale University, and a full membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her novels became so popular that Ms. Wharton was able to live comfortably on her earnings the rest of her life. Edith continued to write until a stroke took her life in August 1937.
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