Edith Wharton followed up her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Age of Innocence with Old New York: Four Novellas, a set of four novellas set in that novel’s same time and place. Indeed, some of the characters from the earlier novel overlap in these stories. Each novella corresponds to a decade with the set spanning the 1840s through the 1870s. These novellas are more like character studies in which the characters and their relationships to each other and to society at large are brought under the scrutiny of Wharton’s acute social-critical sense. Although comments on all four novellas are welcome, we will focus our discussion on the second one titled “The Old Maid” which was adapted as a 1939 film starring Betty Davis. Gore Vidal has said that “there are only three or four American novelists who can be thought of as ‘major’ -- and Edith Wharton is one.”

This group meets on the 4th Tuesday of each month from September through May, excluding December. Call the Senior Center for details and to register at 203-834-6240. Comstock Community Center, 180 School Road, Wilton.