The Fruit of the Tree

New York, NY: Charles Scribner's Sons. Very Good. 1907. 1st Edition; 1st Printing. Hardcover. B&W Illustrations; This is a First Edition, First Printing, in Binding B (A14.I.a.I.) . The book is in Very Good condition and is lacking the dust jacket. The spine of the book has a light slant. There is some light bumping, rubbing and beginning fraying to the spine ends and corners of the book covers. The gilt lettering on the spine of the book has started to rub, especially the publisher's name. The text pages are clean and bright. Illustrated with three full plate illustrations (including the frontispiece). There is a previous owner's inked name and address on the front endpaper and an inked date on the front pastedown page. There is also a small embossed bookstore name and address on the front endpaper. The rear inner hinge has cracking to the bottom half of the paper, but the hinge itself is in good condition. "Wharton's writings often dealt with themes such as "social and individual fulfillment, repressed sexuality, and the manners of old families and the new elite." Maureen Howard, editor of Edith Wharton: Collected Stories, notes several recurring themes in Wharton's short stories, including confinement and attempts at freedom, the morality of the author, critiques of intellectual pretension, and the “unmasking” of the truth. Wharton's writing also explored themes of “social mores and social reform” as they relate to the “extremes and anxieties of the Gilded Age”. These themes were expressed in her ghost stories, in which supernatural specters function as richly costumed variations on a theme of all-too-human cruelty. "(from Wikipedia) .