Summer Classic Collection - Classic Collection - UNABRIDGED Author:Edith Wharton Written in Paris in 1916, as Edith Wharton contemplated the German army’s approach, Summer is her most erotic and lyrical novel. It is here that she explores her most daring theme—a woman’s awakening to her sexual needs. The book’s heroine is an eighteen-year-old girl named Charity Royall. Living in the small town of North Dormer, she is ... more »ignorant of desire until she meets a visiting architect, Lucius Harney. Like the succulent summer in the beautiful Berkshires around them, their romance is lush and picturesque, but its consequences are harsh and real. Praised for its realism and candor by such writers as Joseph Conrad and Henry James and compared to Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Summer was one of Wharton's personal favorites of all her novels and remains as fresh and relevant today as when it was first written.« less