The House of Mirth (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)

A literary sensation when it was published by Scribners in 1905, "The House of Mirth" quickly established Edith Wharton as the most important American woman of letters in the twentieth century. The first American novel to provide a devastatingly accurate portrait of New York's aristocracy, it is the story of the beautiful and beguiling Lily Bart and her ill-fated attempt to rise to the heights of a heartless society in which, ultimately, she has no part.