Sanctuary
()
About this ebook
Edith Wharton
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.
Read more from Edith Wharton
Summer Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Touchstone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Custom of the Country Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mother's Recompense Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Son at the Front Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Old Maid: The 'Fifties Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Writing of Fiction: The Classic Guide to the Art of the Short Story and the Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Glimpses of the Moon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Works of Edith Wharton. Illustrated: The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome and others Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Children Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Reef Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Age of Innocence Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Manhattan Noir 2: The Classics Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Collected Short Stories of Edith Wharton Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/550 Feminist Masterpieces you have to read before you die (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5In Morocco Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Roman Fever and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In Morocco Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Custom of the Country Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Roman Fever: Short Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Italian Villas and Their Gardens Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Children Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Backward Glance: An Autobiography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Greatest American Short Stories: 50+ Classics of American Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHere and Beyond Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Short Stories Of Edith Wharton - Volume I: Madame de Treymes & Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Twilight Sleep Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Greatest American Short Stories (Vol. 1) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Sanctuary
Related ebooks
The Valley of Decision Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Touchstone Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummer Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Custom of the Country Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMadame de Treymes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Reef Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGlimpses of the Moon Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBunner Sisters Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Fruit of the Tree Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEthan Frome Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Age of Innocence Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The House of Mirth Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Valley of Decision (Annotated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTwilight Sleep (Annotated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Age of Innocence (Annotated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe House of Mirth (Annotated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Bunner Sisters (Annotated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe House of Mirth (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Age of Innocence (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStudy Guide to Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Marne Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummer (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Hemingway Patrols: Ernest Hemingway and His Hunt for U-Boats Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Study Guide for Edith Wharton's "Roman Fever" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOur Unseen Guest: The Finley’s Conversations with Stephen, 1920 , New Introduction by Linda Pendleton Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRoom 13 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEthan Frome & Selected Stories (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Henry James Best Novels Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings7 best short stories by Gertrude Atherton Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Murder Book of Mr. J. G. Reeder (The Mind of Mr. J. G. Reeder) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Classics For You
The Master & Margarita Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Old Man and the Sea: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flowers for Algernon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Master and Margarita Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Little Women (Seasons Edition -- Winter) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Farewell to Arms Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Confederacy of Dunces Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Animal Farm: A Fairy Story Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sense and Sensibility (Centaur Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5East of Eden Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ulysses: With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Learn French! Apprends l'Anglais! THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY: In French and English Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Count of Monte-Cristo English and French Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wuthering Heights (with an Introduction by Mary Augusta Ward) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Jungle: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Republic by Plato Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Count of Monte Cristo (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For Whom the Bell Tolls: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As I Lay Dying Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bell Jar: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Good Man Is Hard To Find And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Titus Groan Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sun Also Rises: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Sanctuary
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Sanctuary - Edith Wharton
SANCTUARY
Part I
Chapter I
It is not often that youth allows itself to feel undividedly happy: the sensation is too much the result of selection and elimination to be within reach of the awakening clutch on life. But Kate Orme, for once, had yielded herself to happiness; letting it permeate every faculty as a spring rain soaks into a germinating meadow. There was nothing to account for this sudden sense of beatitude; but was it not this precisely which made it so irresistible, so overwhelming? There had been, within the last two months — since her engagement to Denis Peyton — no distinct addition to the sum of her happiness, and no possibility, she would have affirmed, of adding perceptibly to a total already incalculable. Inwardly and outwardly the conditions of her life were unchanged; but whereas, before, the air had been full of flitting wings, now they seemed to pause over her and she could trust herself to their shelter.
Many influences had combined to build up the centre of brooding peace in which she found herself. Her nature answered to the finest vibrations, and at first her joy in loving had been too great not to bring with it a certain confusion, a readjusting of the whole scenery of life. She found herself in a new country, wherein he who had led her there was least able to be her guide. There were moments when she felt that the first stranger in the street could have interpreted her happiness for her more easily than Denis. Then, as her eye adapted itself, as the lines flowed into each other, opening deep vistas upon new horizons, she began to enter into possession of her kingdom, to entertain the actual sense of its belonging to her. But she had never before felt that she also belonged to it; and this was the feeling which now came to complete her happiness, to give it the hallowing sense of permanence.
She rose from the writing-table where, list in hand, she had been going over the wedding-invitations, and walked toward the drawing-room window. Everything about her seemed to contribute to that rare harmony of feeling which levied a tax on every sense. The large coolness of the room, its fine traditional air of spacious living, its outlook over field and woodland toward the lake lying under the silver bloom of September; the very scent of the late violets in a glass on the writing-table; the rosy-mauve masses of hydrangea in tubs along the terrace; the fall, now and then, of a leaf through the still air — all, somehow, were mingled in the suffusion of well-being that yet made them seem but so much dross upon its current.
The girl’s smile prolonged itself at the sight of a figure approaching from the lower slopes above the lake. The path was a short cut from the Peyton place, and she had known that Denis would appear in it at about that hour. Her smile, however, was prolonged not so much by his approach as by her sense of the impossibility of communicating her mood to him. The feeling did not disturb her. She could not imagine sharing her deepest moods with any one, and the world in which she lived with Denis was too bright and spacious to admit of any sense of constraint. Her smile was in truth a tribute to that clear-eyed directness of his which was so often a refuge from her own