Lily Bart is twenty-nine, beautiful and charming. She has expensive tastes, loves to gamble and socializes with the wealthy upper-class families of New York. But her meagre finances are dwindling and her place in society is slipping away from her. Her only hope of security is to find a suitable husband. However, Lily has an independence of spirit that stands in the way of her committing to the suitors available to her. As her options diminish, her friends become her enemies and her situation grows increasing perilous. In The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton gives us a witty and piercingly insightful dark satire about the privileged society of early twentieth-century New York. This beautiful Macmillan Collector's Library edition of The House of Mirth features an introduction by novelist Danuta Reah. Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.

Edith Wharton was born in 1862 to a prominent and wealthy New York family. In 1885 she married Boston socialite 'Teddy' Wharton but the marriage was unhappy and they divorced in 1913. The couple travelled frequently to Europe and settled in France, where Wharton stayed until her death in 1937. Her first major novel was The House of Mirth (1905); many short stories, travel books, memoirs and novels followed, including Ethan Frome (1911) and The Reef (1912). She was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature with The Age of Innocence (1920) and she was thrice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. She was also decorated for her humanitarian work during the First World War.