The Touchstone

The Touchstone is a novella by the American writer Edith Wharton, published in 1900 and her first narrative work set in old New York society, issued by Charles Scribner's Sons. The story centers on the young Stephen Glennard: his career is declining and he can barely afford to marry his beloved fiancée, Alexa Trent. Chancing upon a magazine advertisement promising high prices for letters by celebrities, he remembers a batch of passionate private letters written to him by the late woman of letters Margaret Aubyn—obscure when she wrote them, now renowned. Glennard erases the names connecting the letters to himself and sells them to a publisher in exchange for money and a marriage. Yet the transaction is built on a betrayal of another's genuine feeling, and shame and guilt increasingly corrode his life, finally forcing him to confess to his wife. Alexa's reaction surprises him and allows him a limited reckoning with himself and a measure of atonement. Short in length and restrained in tone, the book uses a single moral event—the selling of private letters—to examine the tensions among fame, respectability, and conscience. Later critics often view it as an early, sentimental attempt by Wharton, while some scholars argue that its irony amounts to a parody of the popular sentimental mode. The book appears in various English classics collections and is in the public domain.