Edith Wharton 
Sanctuary (Annotated) 

• This edition includes the following editor’s introduction: Edith Wharton, the feminism of a Pulitzer Prize winner

Originally published in 1903, “Sanctuary” is a unique novel by American author Edith Wharton. Written while she was writing “The House of Mirth, ” “Sanctuary” is a little hidden gem of Wharton’s, with impeccable prose and moments when the suspense becomes almost unbearable.



“Sanctuary” tells the story of Kate Orme, a young woman whose marital bliss is shattered when she comes face to face with the dark secret hidden by her fiancé, Denis Peyton, a man of fortune, but with a past ruled by lies and deceit. When both have a son, and Denis dies, Kate is convinced that the spirit of her husband remains in her young offspring, passing on his moral vices. From then on, she will devote herself to fighting to prevent this from happening.



A ’
European’ novel, an almost
Jamesian melodrama, “Sanctuary” probes the mysteries of personality and the debts of the past. With the precision, beauty, and keen insight into the innermost recesses of upper-class New York society that made her one of the great literary voices of the twentieth century, Edith Wharton offers a subtle account of the struggle between nature and the acquired that dominated the early twentieth century.