The Reef Summary
Edith Wharton

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The Reef Summary & Study Guide

The Reef Summary

Anna Leath and Sophy Viner discover that they love the same man, George Darrow, an American diplomat who comes from the same genteel class as Anna Leath, but who has had experiences in both Anna's and Sophy's worlds because his position as a man permits him to move freely from one to the other. The donnee of The Reef concerns a set of accidental coincidences that place these three characters unexpectedly in a triangular relationship.

George Darrow is on his way to a meeting with Anna Leath, the woman he loves and hopes to marry. She puts him off with a telegram after he has embarked on his journey. While travelling, he meets Sophy Viner — a younger woman whom he knows only slightly and who is in desperate circumstances having left her employer, Mrs. Murrett, with no clear prospects in sight. He takes pity on her and...

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Edith Wharton Biographies (8)

Edith (Newbold Jones) Wharton

3,042 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

10,907 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

10,894 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

9,059 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

9,451 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

Edith Wharton

387 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

3,538 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 Wharton

11,252 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

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The Reef SummaryEdith Wharton

The Reef Summary

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The Reef Short Guide

Edith Wharton Biographies (8)

The Reef Summary
Edith Wharton