Summer

Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.9

Word count: 315K words
Chapters: 32

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Summer by Edith WhartonAuthor: Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Mar 12, 2006

Editor's review

Summer is an often underrated novella by Edith Wharton, portraying a young woman of humble origins struggling with desire, class, and self-choice in a closed New England town. Unlike The Age of Innocence, which elaborates the intricate etiquette of high society, it turns its gaze to a more marginal rural space, rendering in restrained and precise strokes how a person wavers between moral discipline and inner impulse. Wharton's narration is calm yet not cold; landscape description and character psychology mirror each other, and by the latter half one feels a slowly accumulating tension. This Gutenberg edition is the original English text, suitable as a light entry into Wharton's work and for reading alongside Ethan Frome to observe how she handles different fates in similar regional settings. When reading, note the narrator's stance of sympathy and distance toward the heroine; that is the key to understanding the whole book.

Who it's for

A good fit for

English readers seeking an initial acquaintance with Edith Wharton's work
Readers interested in American provincial society and women's circumstances
Readers needing a moderately lengthed original English novel for practice
Readers who prefer restrained narration and psychological portrayal over strong plot

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting fast pacing and strong conflict
Beginners whose English reading is not yet proficient and who need annotated assistance
Readers hoping for Wharton's representative high-society subject matter

Reading tips

Read through once without looking up words to grasp the heroine's situation and emotional trajectory, then revisit the wording of key scenes.
Note how town space, seasons, and character psychology correspond; Wharton's landscapes often carry narrative function.
After finishing, compare with Ethan Frome to contrast how the two works handle different choices in similar environments.
If the English is difficult, read a Chinese translation first for the plot, then return to the original to appreciate the rhythm of the language.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book in Chinese or English?

This is an original English e-book provided by Project Gutenberg; the text is in English, with no Chinese parallel text or annotations. It suits readers with some English reading ability who are willing to engage directly with the original.

Can I read this without having read other works by Wharton?

Yes. This is a standalone novella that does not depend on prior knowledge of other works. It is short and tightly focused, often regarded as a light entry into Wharton's fiction; reading her longer novels afterward will be smoother.

Is this book stylistically the same as The Age of Innocence?

Not entirely. Both concern the constraint of social norms on individuals, but Summer sets its background in a rural town, with more marginal characters and more compact, restrained narration, and less elaborate high-society scene-setting.

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About the author

Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937 Author

Edith Wharton (Wharton, Edith, 1862–1937) was an American novelist, with 44 works held in this collection. She depicts with fine brushwork the manners and moral dilemmas of New York high society from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. Her representative novels The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth both focus on women's struggles among marriage, class, and selfhood; Ethan Frome, set in rural New England, presents tragic fates in a repressive environment. Her style is calm and restrained, revealing through everyday details the conflict between individual psychology and social convention, and her works combine irony with sympathy. Beyond novels, she also wrote nonfiction such as The Decoration of Houses and ghost-story collections such as Tales of Men and Ghosts, showing diverse subjects. Public information is limited, and biographical details fall outside this introduction; yet judging from the works held here alone, her sustained attention to social class and gender roles makes her a voice not to be overlooked in American literature.