B A U M A N R A R E B O O K S S U M M E R 2 0 2 3 41 "A BLINDING, RAW FORCE OF PRIMITIVE BEAUTY": EDITH WHARTON'S THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY, IN THE SCARCE ORIGINAL DUST JACKET 41. WHARTON, Edith. The Custom of the Country. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1913. Octavo, original giltstamped red cloth, original dust jacket. Housed in a custom clamshell box. $4000 First edition of one of Wharton's best novels, in the scarce original dust jacket. "In some ways her most successful work, in that it draws on all her strengths as a novelist, especially as satirist and social chronicler… Custom is !lled with penetrating satire, acute observations of the new Gilded Age, forcefully drawn characters, and international settings charged with a new power and direction… Undine is a creature of glaring light, a blinding, raw force of primitive beauty" (Lowe, 391-92). Serialized earlier the same year, in revised form, in Scribner's Magazine. Garrison A21.I.a. Melish 48. Book !ne, scarce original dust jacket with toning to spine, chipping to extremities, mostly at the spine ends.
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