Download or read book Old New York written by Edith Wharton and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-06-30 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Four novellas by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Age of Innocence, brilliantly capturing New York of the 1840s, '50s, '60s, and '70s. The four short novels in this collection are set in the New York of the 1840s, '50s, '60s, and '70s, each one revealing the codes and customs that ruled society, portrayed with the keen style that is uniquely Edith Wharton's. Originally published in 1924 and long out of print, these tales are vintage Wharton, dealing boldly with such themes as infidelity, illegitimacy, jealousy, the class system, and the condition of women in society. Included in this remarkable quartet are False Dawn, which concerns the stormy relationship between a domineering father and his son; The Old Maid, the best known of the four, in which a young woman's secret illegitimate child is adopted by her best friend—with devastating results; The Spark, about a young man's moral rehabilitation, which is "sparked" by a chance encounter with Walt Whitman; and New Year's Day, an O. Henryesque tale of a married woman suspected of adultery. Old New York is Wharton at her finest.