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Title details for The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton - Available

The Buccaneers

by Edith Wharton
Marion Mainwaring
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
Edith Wharton's spellbinding final novel tells a story of love in the gilded age that crosses the boundaries of society—now an original series on AppleTV+!
“Brave, lively, engaging...a fairy-tale novel, miraculouly returned to life.”—The New York Times Book Review
Set in the 1870s, the same period as Wharton's The Age of Innocence, The Buccaneers is about five wealthy American girls denied entry into New York Society because their parents' money is too new. At the suggestion of their clever governess, the girls sail to London, where they marry lords, earls, and dukes who find their beauty charming—and their wealth extremely useful.
After Wharton's death in 1937, The Christian Science Monitor said, "If it could have been completed, The Buccaneers would doubtless stand among the richest and most sophisticated of Wharton's novels." Now, with wit and imagination, Marion Mainwaring has finished the story, taking her cue from Wharton's own synopsis. It is a novel any Wharton fan will celebrate and any romantic reader will love. This is the richly engaging story of Nan St. George and Guy Thwarte, an American heiress and an English aristocrat, whose love breaks the rules of both their societies.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    November 15, 2022

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780593740026
      • File size: 430634 KB
      • Duration: 14:57:09

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Unfinished by Edith Wharton, The Buccaneers was completed by Marion Mainwaring. Wharton illuminates aristocratic society in turn-of-the-century America and England through a cast of memorable characters who unwaveringly carry out etiquette and tradition. Pristine images of character and countryside leap from the text with Cassidy's lyrical narration. She brilliantly renders each character with vocal versatility which discerns the personality, emotion, class and spirit of each. The audio quality awakens one's sensibilities to the depth, richness and honesty of the quintessential romance that embodies this novel. You'll feel disappointed when the story and the audio experience conclude. J.K.R. Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      August 30, 1993
      Aided by the gifted Mainwaring, Wharton delivers a posthumous gift to both the high and the low of brow with this novel, which was left unfinished at her death in 1937 and published in its incomplete state a year later. While filled with glamorous, class-obsessed characters and plot lines that Krantz and Sheldon might envy, it is a work of beauty--a grandly executed, full-scale counterpart to Wharton's classic story ``Roman Fever.'' Here, a Mrs. St. George, a matron of the 1870s whose husband has means but no social standing, schemes to advance her daughters' prospects; she hires a well-connected British governess, Laura Testvalley. The governess's taste and sensibilities make her the perfect commentator on the caste-consciousness of the other characters, both the parvenus and the British aristocrats whose sons are eventually conquered by the ``buccaneers,'' bold American daughters of rich fathers. The suggestion of cynicism, meanwhile, is elegantly balanced by an infusion of romance. Wharton's superb sophistication and literary virtues need no enumeration, and Mainwaring, who completed the novel in accordance with Wharton's notes and outlines, is also to be heartily commended. Her entrance, about three-fifths of the way through, goes unheralded by notes or typographical fanfare--and it is so smooth and so assured that it will likely go undetected by the reader. 50,000 first printing; $50,000 ad/promo; BOMC main selection; film rights to Twentieth Century-Fox.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Dana Ivey reads in a quiet, even voice providing an interesting taste of Wharton's literary style and genre. M.B.K. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      October 3, 1994
      Mainwaring commendably completes Wharton's unfinished novel about five wealthy American women seeking entrance into elite society by marrying British aristocrats.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Edith Wharton's last, unfinished, novel (completed by Marion Mainwaring in 1993) is, unsurprisingly, about young women from New York's moneyed class. In this audiobook they travel to England to seek their fortunes and husbands. Carol Monda's British accent sometimes wavers, and the voices she creates for the characters are not uniformly strong and distinctive. But she conveys emotions well, especially those of the young women, "the buccaneers" of the title. All five of the pirates marry money or titles (in one case both), but "good" marriages are not always happy ones, and the results are (also unsurprisingly, for Wharton) mixed. Those unfamiliar with Victorian women's fashions may be lost in spots, but this is still, overall, a satisfying listen. D.M.H. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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