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Mother's Recompense

Edith Wharton | Joanna Biggs | Jennifer Wilson
€18.50
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1925
A01=Edith Wharton
A02=Jennifer Wilson
A02=Joanna Biggs
abandonment
abroad
American
American literature
Appleton and Company
audiobook
Author_Edith Wharton
Author_Jennifer Wilson
Author_Joanna Biggs
authors
autonomy
bittersweet ending
book club fiction
brandon taylor
Category=FB
character-driven fiction
class and gender
classic fiction
classics
Clephane
comparable
Country
criticism
D.
depth
dilemma
divorce
drawing room fiction
e-book
early twentieth century fiction
Edith Wharton
edition
ending
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
estrangement
Ethan Frome
Europe
expatriate life
family
feminist literary
fiction
Fifth Avenue
first woman Pulitzer
forbidden love
forthcoming
French Riviera
Gilded Age fiction
Greek tragedy
guilt
Hamlet
Henry James
illicit romance
Jazz Age fiction
Jennifer Wilson
Joanna Biggs
Kate
literary fiction
literature
love triangle
marriage
Mirth
moral
moral ambiguity
mother-daughter
motherhood
National Women's Hall of Fame
New York City
New York society
novel of manners
Oedipus
old money
older woman younger man
post-World
Prize winner
psychological
public domain
Pulitzer Prize
reconciliation
regret
relationship
reprint
reputation
respectability
sacrifice
scandal
secrets
shame
smith &
social
social criticism
social exile
social novel
social observation
stigma
survey
taylor classics
The Age of Innocence
The Custom of the
The House of
The Reef
trade paperback
tragic
tragic heroine
Unnamed Press
unreliable interiority
upper class
War I fiction
women and society
women's
women's fiction
women's independence
women's studies

Product details

  • ISBN 9781961884939
  • Dimensions: 127 x 196mm
  • Publication Date: 29 Oct 2026
  • Publisher: Unnamed Press
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Paperback
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Description
Edith Wharton's little discussed Jazz Age classic, The Mother’s Recompense (1925), finds Kate Clephane returning to New York society, after abandoning her husband and three-year-old daughter years before. 

American Kate Clephane has lived in Europe for twenty years, the ghosts of a failed marriage and abandoned daughter haunting her as she drifts along the French Riviera. It is an  aimless, turbulent life, lived in the company of other expats and outcasts, the scars of World War I still evident across the continent. 

When Kate is summoned back to New York by the very daughter (now a wealthy heiress) she once abandoned, Kate leaps at the chance to re-enter the world that previously shut its doors on her. Just as Kate is on the cusp of reclaiming the life she forfeited, Chris Fenno, her former lover, returns to the scene, this time as a suitor for Kate’s daughter. For Kate, this disaster cuts two ways, for not only is Chris an opportunistic and feckless man, but he also remains the love of Kate’s life. Thus begins a complex and intricate dance of secrets, desires, scandal, and shifting motives. 

The Mother’s Recompense is a brilliant commentary on freedom, motherhood, agency, and duty. It explores the full weight of the choices we make as we try and fail to reinvent and reimagine ourselves. Wharton’s gifts for wit, dialogue, and image are put to stunning use in this riveting social drama that sees New York society shaken to its very foundations.
About Edith Wharton | Jennifer Wilson | Joanna Biggs
Edith Wharton was an American writer and designer. Wharton drew upon her insider's knowledge of the upper-class New York "aristocracy" to portray realistically the lives and morals of the Gilded Age. In 1921, she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for her novel The Age of Innocence. Joanna Biggs is the author of A Life of One's Own: Nine Women Writers Begin Again and a finalist for the 2023 National Award for Arts Writing. She is an editor at The Yale Review. Jennifer Wilson is a staff writer at The New Yorker covering books and culture. Previously, she was a critic at The New York Times Book Review. She holds a Ph.D. in Russian literature from Princeton. Allison Miriam Smith is a co-founder of Smith & Taylor Classics. She is also an Acquiring Editor and Publishing & Publicity Manager for Unnamed Press. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English & Creative Writing from the University of Southern California where she was an assistant curator for the USC Doheny Library George Cassady Lewis Carroll Special Collection. She later went on to earn a Masters in 18th & 19th c. Literature from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, working nights at the library. Before Unnamed Press, she was a bookseller at Skylight Books. She lives in Los Angeles, CA.

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