Copyright

      William Collins

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      This eBook published by William Collins in 2015

      Life & Times section © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

      Gerard Cheshire asserts his moral right as author of the Life & Times section

      Classic Literature: Words and Phrases adapted from

       Collins English Dictionary

      Cover by e-Digital Design. Cover image: Seven Miles to Farmington c. 1853 (oil on canvas), George Henry Durrie (1820–63)/Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut, USA/Gift of the Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection & Insurance Co./Bridgeman images

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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      Source ISBN: 9780008110543

      Ebook Edition © January 2015 ISBN: 9780008110550

      Version: 2014-12-18

       History of Collins

      In 1819, millworker William Collins from Glasgow, Scotland, set up a company for printing and publishing pamphlets, sermons, hymn books, and prayer books. That company was Collins and was to mark the birth of HarperCollins Publishers as we know it today. The long tradition of Collins dictionary publishing can be traced back to the first dictionary William published in 1824, Greek and English Lexicon. Indeed, from 1840 onwards, he began to produce illustrated dictionaries and even obtained a licence to print and publish the Bible.

      Soon after, William published the first Collins novel, Ready Reckoner; however, it was the time of the Long Depression, where harvests were poor, prices were high, potato crops had failed, and violence was erupting in Europe. As a result, many factories across the country were forced to close down and William chose to retire in 1846, partly due to the hardships he was facing.

      Aged 30, William’s son, William II, took over the business. A keen humanitarian with a warm heart and a generous spirit, William II was truly “Victorian” in his outlook. He introduced new, up-to-date steam presses and published affordable editions of Shakespeare’s works and The Pilgrim’s Progress, making them available to the masses for the first time. A new demand for educational books meant that success came with the publication of travel books, scientific books, encyclopedias, and dictionaries. This demand to be educated led to the later publication of atlases, and Collins also held the monopoly on scripture writing at the time.

      In the 1860s Collins began to expand and diversify and the idea of “books for the millions” was developed. Affordable editions of classical literature were published, and in 1903 Collins introduced 10 titles in their Collins Handy Illustrated Pocket Novels. These proved so popular that a few years later this had increased to an output of 50 volumes, selling nearly half a million in their year of publication. In the same year, The Everyman’s Library was also instituted, with the idea of publishing an affordable library of the most important classical works, biographies, religious and philosophical treatments, plays, poems, travel, and adventure. This series eclipsed all competition at the time, and the introduction of paperback books in the 1950s helped to open that market and marked a high point in the industry.

      HarperCollins is and has always been a champion of the classics, and the current Collins Classics series follows in this tradition – publishing classical literature that is affordable and available to all. Beautifully packaged, highly collectible, and intended to be reread and enjoyed at every opportunity.

       Life & Times

      Wharton and Class

      Many novelists use their prose as a means of expressing their frustrations with the contradictions and hypocrisies of human behaviour, often because they themselves do not adhere particularly stringently to the rules of etiquette that exist in their society. Of course 19th century societies in Britain and the USA were prone to formalizing polite society as a way of distinguishing the haves from the have-nots. Edith Wharton was born into a privileged American family, but she was equipped with the sensibilities to notice the contrasting absurdity with which many of her class went about their lives in public and in private. Like many other novelists before her, Wharton saw that people were people wherever they happened to fit in the hierarchy of society. They were equally capable of honourable and dishonourable behaviour; it is just that the upper class tended to cover up the latter and exaggerate the former for the sake of keeping up appearances. Wharton was not vitriolic though, for her writing is imbued with humour even though it criticises between the lines. The Age of Innocence is essentially a story about vanity, pride, judgement, temptation and prejudice in the well-to-do cohort of late 19th century US society. Underpinning the tale is the double-standard.

      The Age of Innocence

      The Age of Innocence is fundamentally about a gentleman who is engaged to be married, but allows his affections to stray toward another woman who is separated from her husband and about to divorce. In today’s occidental society the plot would barely raise an eyebrow, but in its period it would have been viewed as an absolute scandal. Wharton published the book in 1920, some 40-odd years after the time in which the story is set, but she was 58 years old and very familiar with the subject matter as she had been born and raised in the environment she describes. Even in the first quarter of the 20th century divorce was considered something of a taboo, so the book caused quite a stir. Wharton had, herself, been in a loveless marriage for almost three decades and had experienced a nervous breakdown following her divorce in 1913, so writing The Age of Innocence must have been therapeutic as well as a vessel through which Wharton could show the world her views. The basic premise of her story was that if you belong to a society that will trap you in marriage, you better be very sure that you are marrying the right person.

      In society today, the finger of judgement is no longer pointed at those who do not succeed in marriage. As a consequence, many contemporary readers have an interest in Wharton’s genre. While they see that an overly formalized society can make marriage oppressive and generate double-standards, they also see that a lack of formality leads to a society where marriage is entirely devalued.

      Wharton’s masterpiece is about as personal as one can get as a writer. The central character, Newland, still goes ahead with his marriage despite his obsessive feelings for the other woman, Countess Ellen. His wife, May, is consequently destined for a life of betrothal with unrequited love. So too is he of course, such is his sense of honour in being seen to do the right thing in the eyes of the society he belongs to. Following the marriage Newland cannot desist from courting Ellen and