The House of Mirth

The House of Mirth is a sharp, brutal, and destructive tragedy about Lily Bart, a well-born but pennyless young woman belonging to New York City's high society of the 1890s. Written by American author Edith Wharton, it came out October 14, 1905. The House of Mirth traces Lily's slow two-year social descent from privilege to a lonely existence on the margins of society as she fails to marry a man of wealth and status to secure her a place in affluent society. Wharton uses Lily as an attack on "an irresponsible, grasping and morally corrupt upper class."

The House of Mirth was serialized in Scribner's Magazine beginning in January 1905 which created great interest in the story. In November 1905, Charles Scribner wrote to Wharton that the novel was showing "the most rapid sale of any book ever published by Scribner." By the end of December, sales had reached 140,000 copies. Wharton's royalties were valued at more than half a million dollars in today's currency. The commercial and critical success of The House of Mirth solidified Wharton's reputation as a major novelist.

Literary reviewers and critics at the time categorized the novel as both a social satire and a novel of manners. Its commercial success allowed critics to classify it as a genre novel. In 2003, Carol Singley describes it as "a unique blend of romance, realism, and naturalism, [thus transcending] the narrow classification of a novel of manners." The House of Mirth continues to attract readers over a century after its first publication because Lily Bart's life and death matters as the existential struggle between "who we are and what society tells us we should be."

The House of Mirth was Wharton's second published novel, preceded by two novellas, The Touchstone (1900) and Sanctuary (1903), and a novel, The Valley of Decision (1902).