From the 1993 Viking edition of The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton: “Brave, lively, engaging,” said The New York Times Book Review of Edith Wharton’s classic novel The Buccaneers, left uncompleted at her death (finished by Marion Mainwaring).

Nan and Virginia St. George have the great good luck to be born beautiful and wealthy — the two qualities prized above all others in 1870s New York — but the insurmountably bad luck to come from “new money.”

Shunned by the snobbish guardians of Manhattan society, the lively girls still attract many admirers, but no offers of marriage from eligible men — the grail pursued discreetly but with single-minded intensity by all young women of polite birth (and their mothers). Read More→