The Last Asset (Annotated)

In "The Last Asset," Edith Wharton anatomizes the social commerce of transatlantic high society with her customary precision and irony. The story centers on Mrs. Newell, an American expatriate schemer in Paris, who discovers that the estranged husband she has long treated as an embarrassment may be indispensable to securing her daughter's advantageous marriage. Written in Wharton's lucid, incisive...