Winter Book Club

At the Mount

The Mount, former home of Edith Wharton in Lenox, will offer a series of free online discussions of her acclaimed works from January through March. This year the Mount Book Club has selected Bunner Sisters, Twilight Sleep, and The Buccaneers.

The books can be viewed free online at Project Gutenberg or can be purchased online at The Mount’s affiliate Bookshop.org.

The Bunner Sisters (1916) will be discussed Thursday, January 26th, at 4PM. Wharton wrote the story in 1892 and published it 24 years later in the short story collection Xingu and Other Stories. The plot turns on the sisters' intense relations and their transitory chance for happiness.

Twilight Sleep (1927) is slated for Thursday, February 23rd, also at 4PM. The title, which refers to the popular anesthesia for childbirth, serves as a metaphor for the state of self-delusion in which most American society women lived. The novel concerns the conflict between generations and focuses on the victimization of young people by their elders.

The final discussion is set for Thursday, March 30th, at 4PM. The Buccaneers (1938) was Wharton's final novel and concerns the acquisition of European titles through aristocratic matches. She died in 1937 before completing it but it was published by Gaillard Lapsley. A historical romance, it takes place in Saratoga Springs, New York City and England between 1873 and 1877.