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Moved to tears Which book, poem or play has made you cry more than any other? Continuing our series, the author and critic Jonathan Bate chooses Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth

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From: The Sunday Telegraph London
Date: 20040104
Author:JONATHAN BATE

PARADOXICALLY , the book that makes me cry has laughter in its title: Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth. Like Henry James, Wharton has a wonderful gift of revealing the inner life of her characters while also documenting the elegance and hypocrisy of high society. Lily Bart, the novel's heroine, is not immediately likeable but by the end of the story her independence of spirit shines through. It is the accumulation of desolation in the final three chapters that reduces me to tears: first Selden's marriage proposal that is not quite made, then the childless Lily's glimpse of someone else's ...

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