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This is a wonderful story of English school life, depicting the driving of boys and the hungry, cramped life of the masters, as well as the tragedy that captures and leads Mr. Perrin. We are set up so as not to love the school teacher Mr. Perrin, who is falling into our eyes into some kind of paranoid delusion. Nevertheless, at every step, the author deviates from the expected result, truly not letting...

Edith Wharton’s 1913 novel is a devastating critique of American upward mobility, told through the journey of Undine Spragg from fictional Midwestern Apex City to New York to Paris. Undine Spragg is one of the most ruthless characters in all of literature, as selfishly unscrupulous as she is fiercely beautiful. As Undine climbs the social ladder through a series of marriages and affairs, she shows...