T he Reef has been called Edith Wharton's most autobiographical novel, not in the sense that the events in the novel parallel events in Wharton's own life, but that the upbringing of the leading character is much the same as Wharton's own upbringing.

Anna Leath comes from an old, wellestablished New York family. She has never known any economic or physical need, but nonetheless her life has been characterized by an emotional and sexual deprivation that leave her in her late thirties like a young woman still waiting for her great awakening to the passionate side of life. Raised to be "a model of ladylike repression," Anna grew up in a world where no one in her parents' circle of acquaintances ever did or said anything that was "immoral or ill-bred." Anna wondered how great literature had ever been conceived, much less created. All the people...