Madame de Treymes Book

Perhaps her most Jamesian work, Madame de Treymes was Edith Wharton s first publication after the widely successful The House of Mirth. Inspired by her entree into Parisian society in the spring of 1906, it follows the fortunes of two innocents abroad: Fanny Frisbee of New York, unhappily married to the dissolute Marquis de Malrive, scion of a great house of the Faubourg St. Germain; and John Durham, her childhood friend, who arrives in Paris intent on persuading Fanny to divorce her husband and marry him instead. A scintillating picture of American and French culture at the turn of the century, and a subtle investigation of the role of women in the prevailing social hierarchy, Madame de Treymes confirmed Edith Wharton s position, as Edmund Wilson wrote, as "an historian of the American society of her time." This edition of Madame de Treymes also includes the novellas Sanctuary (1903) and Bunner Sisters (1906).