The Long Run
Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Readers who want an initial taste of Edith Wharton's narrative style
- Short-story lovers who enjoy psychological portrayal and subtle turns
- Students who need a short sample for courses in English and American literature
Not a good fit for
- Readers expecting a full-length social panorama
- Readers who prefer strong plot and fast-paced narrative
- Those with weak English reading skills who find an understated style difficult
Reading tips
- Read it in one sitting, then revisit the key turning points, noting the narrator's restraint and use of implication.
- Record each choice the characters make and its cost as you read, to appreciate Wharton's unsentimental treatment of fate.
- Compare it with her major novels to observe how character-building is compressed in the short form.
About the publisher
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.
Contents
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FAQ
Is this a novel or a short story?
Can I read it without having read other Wharton works?
What should I pay special attention to while reading?
Comments
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About the 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.
