The Touchstone

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

3.9

Word count: 152K words
Chapters: 16

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.The Touchstone by Edith WhartonAuthor: Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: May 1, 1995

Editor's review

The Touchstone is a novella by Edith Wharton—compact in length yet quietly sharp. Built around a literary transaction that uses private letters as bargaining chips, it draws privacy, reputation, and moral choice into one taut line. With her customary cool touch, Wharton dissects the social workings of New York's intellectual circles; the narration is restrained, the psychological portraiture finely drawn, and the ending lingers. Its value lies not in intricate plotting but in forcing readers to face a pointed question: when respectability and self-interest collide, how does a person persuade himself? A light entry point into Wharton's work, and a good classroom companion to longer novels such as The House of Mirth for discussing the ethical predicaments of the urban middle class in late nineteenth-century America.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Newcomers to Edith Wharton who are daunted by long novels
Readers interested in urban American fiction of the late nineteenth century
Teachers and students who need a short text for discussion in English or American literature courses
Commuters or busy readers who want a complete novel in fragmented time

Not a good fit for

Genre-fiction readers who prefer strong plots and fast pacing
Beginning English readers who expect detailed historical annotations
Pure escapists with no interest in moral questions

Reading tips

Read the main story straight through first, then revisit the key choice passages to appreciate Wharton's foreshadowing and restraint.
As you read, note the guarded wording in dialogue and record how it diverges from characters' true thoughts.
If the English is difficult, use a reliable Chinese translation to clarify relationships first, then return to the original.
Afterward, read it alongside The House of Mirth and compare how Wharton handles marriage, reputation, and money.

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 a novel or a short story?

It is a novella—short in length, centered on a transaction involving private letters, and readable in an evening or two.

How difficult is the English?

The original is late nineteenth- to early twentieth-century English, with fairly formal sentence structure and careful word choice, but the storyline is clear. Readers with CET-4-level English or above who are willing to look up words should manage.

Do I need to know the author's other works first?

No. The book stands alone and does not depend on other works' plots. If you become interested in Wharton's New York fiction afterward, moving on to her longer novels will be smoother.

What are the features of this edition?

This edition comes from Project Gutenberg, a public-domain ebook offering the free English original—convenient for reading and searching on electronic devices—but without modern editorial notes.

Comments

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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.