Ethan Frome
by Edith Wharton 1862–1937
The book, and the century it came out of.
A farmer trapped by a hard New England winter, a sick wife who rules from her chair, and the girl who has come to keep house for them. Wharton framed it as a story reconstructed by a stranger years later, so the reader knows from the first pages that something has already gone wrong. She wrote it as a stylistic exercise and produced the least forgiving book of her career. Illustrated with 60 full-page plates — paintings by Cole and Chambers among them.
I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.
Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton, complete and unabridged. Spelling and punctuation follow present-day American usage; the sentences, the paragraphs and the voice are the author’s, word for word.
It was written in another era and may carry attitudes a reader today will find dated. They are kept for the sake of the work and do not reflect the views of this house.
- Series
- Literary Classics
- Format
- Ebook
- Extent
- about 88 pages
- Reading time
- about 2 hours
- Illustrations
- Full-page plates, credited
- Text
- Complete, unabridged
- Language
- en
- This edition
- 2026
- ISBN
- 9785501895942
60 paintings are bound into this edition
Six of them are shown here, taken from the volume itself. Each is reproduced full page and named with its painter and year.
New England, 1911 — written in Paris
Wharton wrote it while living in France, in a marriage that was ending, about a man trapped in a house with a wife he cannot leave. She later said the story came out of the New England winters she had spent at her house in Massachusetts and the silence of the hill villages there.
Rural New England was emptying in those decades: the young left for the mills and the cities, the farms failed, and what remained were households like this one — three people, a mortgage and a winter that lasts five months.
This book in culture: one version
Most people meet a book like this one on a screen first. Here is what was made of it — and none of these is the book.
- 1993 Ethan Frome John Madden
A page from this edition
Not a mock-up: this page is taken from the finished volume. The ornament above the chapter belongs to its shelf and to no other, the opening letter is set as a drop capital, and the plate below carries the name of the painter and the year.
Both photographed from the finished volume.
Ethan Frome, first published 1911, issued in this edition by Aeneas Press in 2026 on the Literary Classics shelf. Newly set, with the ornament of its series above each chapter and a drop capital on the opening page. Illustrated with full-page plates, each named with its painter.
Published as an ebook and not issued in print by this house; it carries one ISBN, 9785501895942, and is supplied worldwide. This edition — its setting, its ornament, its cover art, and the selection and attribution of its plates — © 2026 Aeneas Press.
Questions readers ask
- Is this the whole of Ethan Frome?
- Yes — complete and unabridged. Nothing is cut, condensed or paraphrased. This is the book, not a summary of it.
- What exactly did you change?
- The spelling and the punctuation follow present-day American usage. Edith Wharton's sentences are untouched — same words, same order, same rhythm.
- Are the pictures really in the book?
- Yes. The edition carries full-page plates bound into the text, each one named with its painter and the year it was made. Six of them are shown on this page.
- How long is it?
- About 88 pages, which is roughly about 2 hours of reading.
- What do I actually get?
- An illustrated ebook with its own ISBN, sold worldwide. One file, yours to keep, readable on any device.
