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About Twilight Sleep

Edith Wharton’s superb satirical novel of the Jazz Age was a critically praised bestseller when it was first published in 1927. Whether it is sex, drugs, or infatuation with the occult, Mrs. Manford and her extended family of socialites are determined to escape the pain, boredom, and emptiness of life through whatever form of “twilight sleep” they can devise or procure. Far ahead of its time, this Wharton classic employed modernist techniques such as an ever-changing narration among the novel’s characters and a close examination of the characters’ self-identities and relationships with one another to tell a tale rich with irony and wit about the upper crust’s own undoing.