3 h 3 minAudiobook7 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if the letters that could secure your future also held the secret you could never escape?
Stephen Glennard wants to marry Alexa Trent, but his income as a New York lawyer stands in the way. He holds something valuable: letters from Margaret Aubyn, a famous novelist, now dead, who loved him more than he loved her. Making them public offers a way past his money troubles.
In The Touchstone, Edith Wharton brings that private choice into a world ruled by money, manners, and reputation. Glennard hopes to keep his part in the letters secret. But Alexa admires Aubyn’s writing, and the woman he loves cannot be kept apart from the memory he wants to escape.
What you’ll discover
- A secret with weight Follow a man whose hidden choice threatens his ability to enjoy what he wants.
- Love entangled with money See how the wish to marry becomes bound up with another woman’s private words.
- A presence that remains Meet Margaret Aubyn through the devotion and letters that keep her memory alive.
- Conscience behind closed doors Enter a quiet drawing room drama where an unseen wrong carries its own force.
- Wharton’s precise early fiction Discover a short, tightly built novel that traces how one act shapes a life.
Who will love it
For readers who love precise novels about conscience, marriage and money, and anyone curious about Wharton before her later fame.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A poor man with a rich secret
- The letters left behind
- A choice made for love and money
- Marriage with a ghost in the house
- What guilt does to a man and a marriage
- How Wharton tells it
Who’s who
- Stephen GlennardA New York lawyer with little money who wants to marry Alexa and holds a secret that begins to weigh on him.
- Alexa TrentThe young woman Glennard loves and marries, sincere and sympathetic, who is moved by the writings of the dead novelist.
- Margaret AubynA gifted novelist, now dead, who loved Glennard and whose letters to him become the center of the story.
- Mrs. ArmigerA member of the social circle who admires Margaret Aubyn and helps keep her memory present in conversation.
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- 15-minute summary
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- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
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The Touchstone
by Edith Wharton · 1900
Stephen Glennard holds a dead writer's love letters, and his choice puts his conscience and marriage at stake.
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From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1 of 6
A poor man with a rich secret
Stephen Glennard is a New York lawyer of modest means. He is educated and well liked, but his income is thin, and in the world he moves in, thin means limited. He loves Alexa Trent, a young woman of good character, and he wants to marry her. Money is the wall between them.
Wharton sets up this pressure with care. Glennard is not shown as a villain or a schemer at the start. He is an ordinary man with ordinary wishes who feels that life has put a price on happiness he cannot pay. The reader is meant to understand him before judging him.
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What is The Touchstone by Edith Wharton about?
It is about a New York lawyer, Stephen Glennard, who uses the letters of a dead woman novelist who loved him to solve his money problems. The book follows the effect of that choice on his conscience and his marriage.
When was The Touchstone written?
Edith Wharton published The Touchstone in 1900. It is an early work of hers, written before her best-known novels, and it is a short novel rather than a long one, set in her own New York world.
What does the title The Touchstone mean?
A touchstone is a hard stone used to test the purity of gold by the mark it leaves. In the book the letters and the guilt they bring test the character of the people involved.
The author
Edith Wharton
1862–1937 · American novelist
Edith Wharton (1862–1937) was an American writer and designer born in New York City. She later lived in France, where she died. Her books include The House of Mirth (1905), Ethan Frome (1911), and The Age of Innocence (1920). She co-wrote The Decoration of Houses with Ogden Codman Jr. in 1897.
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