Edith Wharton was a keen observer of society and a chronicler of her times. There's an elegance and clarity to her writing that makes her stories thoughtful, biting, witty, (and yes) beautifully sad.

Madame de Treymes is set in France, but is primarily about Americans (from New York) living in uneasy terms with the native French aristocracy.

It tells of Fanny de Malrive, a once free-spirited New Yorker now married to a French marquis.

Like many of Wharton's female protagonists, she is trapped within an unhappy marriage as well as being constricted by the "sacred institutions" of the Parisian Faubourg St. Germain aristocracy.

The Malrive family is Catholic and does not believe in divorce.

Fanny does not want to risk losing her son by divorcing her husband.

Praised by critics for its realism and candor, Madame de Treymes was one of Wharton's personal favorites, and remains as relevant today as when it was first published.

EDITH WHARTON (1862-1937), one of the greatest American authors, transformed the art of fiction. The Pulitzer Prize winning author of numerous novels and short stories, including The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome, The Age of Innocence, and The Descent of Man, she is considered to be a literary colossus, and a central figure in the development of the modern novel.

 "Perhaps, the greatest female novelist that America has yet produced."

—Cynthia Griffin Wolff