Summer Summary
Edith Wharton

Everything you need to understand or teach Summer by Edith Wharton.

Summer Summary & Study Guide

Summer Summary

Chapter 1

It is a June afternoon in the early part of the twentieth century as Summer begins, and nineteen-year-old Charity Royall stands on the doorstep of her home, about to set off for her job at the library. As she looks over the small New England town of North Dormer, she notices a stranger, a young man clearly from the city. Something about him captures her imagination, and she feels, not for the first time, that her small-town life is unsatisfying. She is flustered when he enters the library to ask for books about the local architecture, and he appears flustered as well, struck by Charity's beauty. His questions about the library's holdings remind Charity how little she knows about books, and she is both disappointed and relieved when he leaves.

Chapter 2

To clear her head, Charity heads for a hillside, where she lies among the wild flowers and observes the... View more of the Summer Summary

Study Pack

The Summer Study Pack contains about 239 pages of study material in 9 products, including:

Summer Study Guide

Introduction

Author Biography

Summary and Analysis

Characters

Themes

Style

Criticism

Topics for Further Study

Edith Wharton Biography (8)

Edith Wharton

11,246 words, approx. 38 pages

Biography EssayWhile at the close of her career Edith Wharton was sometimes regarded as passe, a literary aristocrat whose fiction about people of high social standing had little to tell about the mas... Read more

Edith Wharton

398 words, approx. 2 pages

Edith Wharton (1861-1937), American author, chronicled the life of affluent Americans between the Civil War and World War I.Edith Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones in New York City, probably on Jan... Read more

Edith Wharton

3,575 words, approx. 12 pages

During the early decades of the twentieth century--at a time when New York City could ban women from smoking in public--one American woman published works which discussed love outside of marriage, sca... Read more

Edith (Newbold Jones) Wharton

3,074 words, approx. 11 pages

The breadth of Edith Wharton's achievement makes definition of her place in literary history difficult. For fifty years she wrote prolifically, and her audience ranged from scholars to readers of popu... Read more

Edith (Newbold Jones) Wharton

10,899 words, approx. 37 pages

Perhaps the most striking thing about Edith Wharton 's reputation as a novelist is the fact that she has been "reclaimed" so many times. This fact seems all the more remarkable when one reflects that... Read more

Edith (Newbold Jones) Wharton

10,890 words, approx. 37 pages

While at the close of her career Edith Wharton was sometimes regarded as passe, a literary aristocrat whose fiction about people of high social standing had little to tell about the masses, particul... Read more

Edith (Newbold Jones) Wharton

9,072 words, approx. 31 pages

Although Edith Wharton is better known as a novelist than a short-story writer, she was in fact writing and publishing stories well before her debut as a novelist in 1902. Her first published story ... Read more

Edith (Newbold Jones) Wharton

9,410 words, approx. 32 pages

Henry James observed in an August 1902 letter to Edith Wharton's sister-in-law, Mrs. Cadwalader Jones, that Wharton "must be tethered in native pastures, even if it reduces her to a back-yard in New Y... Read more

Summer SummaryEdith Wharton

Summer Summary

Study Pack

Summer Study Guide

Edith Wharton Biography (8)

Summer Summary
Edith Wharton