The Joy of Living (Es Lebe das Leben)
Very Good +. Item #8583
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1902. First American Edition. Octavo (19.5cm.); publisher's grey decorative paper-covered boards stamped in gilt, top edge gilt; vii,[1],185pp. Minimal shelf wear, light foxing and brief soil to textblock with a faint curve to front board, else a superlative, Very Good to Near Fine copy. Copyright statement printed in red laid in. Includes Wharton's brief "Translator's Note" on pp. v-vi.
Relatively early published appearance of Edith Wharton, who rather reluctantly agreed to translate Sudermann's play while still laboring as a (relatively speaking) unknown. The play is reminiscent of the translator's future oeuvre, sympathetically depicting the plight of a woman unhappy in her marriage because of her love for another man. In the work "Edith Wharton's House of Mirth: A Case Study" (2003), the scholar Cynthia Griffin Wolff remarks that "The play more or less accepts [the heroine's] right to some alternative," a philosophy embraced in Wharton's fiction.
Price: $100.00