Elizabeth Hardwick
Author
Pub. Date
[2000]
Description
The complex author of the quintessential American masterpiece is demystified by a leading contemporary critic. Hardwick's novelistic flair reveals a former whaleship deck-hand whose voyages were the stuff of travel romances that seduced the public. A single novel, an eternal classic, established him as a founding father of American literature. Now, a century after his death, a new popular surge of interest in Herman Melville calls for Elizabeth Hardwick's...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 9.7 - AR Pts: 26
Description
Set among the elegant brownstones of New York City and opulent country houses like gracious Bellomont on the Hudson, the novel creates a satiric portrayal of what Wharton herself called "a society of irresponsible pleasure-seekers" with a precision comparable to that of Proust. And her brilliant and complex characterization of the doomed Lily Bart, whose stunning beauty and dependence on marriage for economic survival reduce her to a decorative object,...