An impoverished member of the privileged high society of old New York, Lily Bart is beautiful and socially agreeable, but she is almost thirty and still unmarried. Now she is keen to secure a wealthy husband to confirm her status, but the debts she contracts at the card table, her reduced circumstances and the constant gossip she attracts from malevolent tongues through her heedless behaviour and faux pas make her prospects look bleak. As suitor after suitor appears and fades away, and she is drawn further and further down a spiral of loneliness and unhappiness, she realizes that she is just one step away from losing everything she has.

Edith Wharton (1862-1937) is the author of more than forty books including timeless classics such as The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth. She was the first woman to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and is now widely recognised as one of the greatest writers in the English language. Jonas Dovydenas' photographs have appeared in Time, American Photographer, National Geographic Adventure, Soldier of Fortune, and others. He has been a Trustee of Edith Wharton Restoration, Inc. for many years.