The cover art of the 2010 Penguin Classics Red edition of The House of Mirth includes some of Lily Bart’s own words: “Who wants a dingy woman? We are expected to be pretty and well dressed till we drop.”

Edith Wharton in New York, circa 1877, when she was in her early 20s. It would be two more decades until her writing brought her recognition and success. She was 43 when The House of Mirth was published.

Edith Wharton at her desk in 1905, the same year The House of Mirth was published.  Wharton was one of the first novelists to write about the suffocating social conventions of the wealthy and privileged classes, providing an insider’s view of the a world many assumed to be glamorous.

Wharton in a publicity photo, taken at her estate, The Mount, in Lenox, Massachusetts.

Wharton wrote The House of Mirth at her Lenox, Massachusetts estate, The Mount.

Edith Wharton’s personal, first-edition copy of The House of Mirth.  It was a huge hit, selling 140,000 copies its first year.

A page from the original manuscript of The House of Mirth.

A close-up of Wharton’s manuscript for Book 2, Chapter 9 of The House of Mirth.

Lily Bart with Lawrence Selden in an illustration from the first edition of The House of Mirth. Molly McFall, Librarian at The Mount, says that Wharton hated having illustrations published in her books. In her personal copy of The House of Mirth, she crossed out the illustrations credit on the title page, and may have cut out the illustrations, as well – there are none to be found.

An illustration by A.B. Wenzell that appeared in the serialization and in the first edition of The House of Mirth.  The public was hooked when they started reading the chapters in Scribner's Magazine. Every month readers were dying to find out what was going to happen to the beautiful and complicated Lily Bart.