The children by Edith Wharton
The children by Edith Wharton is a novel written in the early 20th century. It follows Martin Boyne, a middle‑aged engineer, who becomes entangled with the glamorous yet chaotic Wheater clan—especially teen caretaker Judith, her delicate twin Terry, and a volatile mix of full-, half-, and step‑siblings—while their wealthy parents drift between yachts and hotels. The story explores modern divorce and remarriage and the cost of adult caprice on children who are
determined to keep themselves together. The opening of the novel finds Boyne on a cruise from Algiers, where he notices Judith minding a baby and a swarm of children and ends up sharing a cabin with her twin, Terry. Through Judith and the governess, Miss Scope, he learns the family tangle: the Wheater parents split and remarried disastrously (to a movie star and an Italian prince), then reunited; the brood now includes “steps” Bun, Beechy, and Zinnie alongside Judith, Terry, and Blanca, with baby Chip adored by the parents. A day trip to Monreale shows Judith’s flair for mothering even as high art leaves her cold, deepening Boyne’s interest. When Terry begs for an education, Boyne agrees to help, stays on to meet the parents in Venice, and secures a cultivated tutor, Gerald Ormerod. Over breakfast at the modest pension where the children stay, Judith refuses school for herself, vowing never to leave the tribe, and hints that Joyce may prefer to keep the tutor in Venice for her own amusement. The section closes with Boyne uncomfortably aware of adult currents swirling around the children he has begun to care about. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937 |
|---|---|
| Title | The children |
| Original Publication | New York: D. Appleton and company, 1928. |
| Credits | Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.) |
| Reading Level | Reading ease score: 80.6 (6th grade). Easy to read. |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature |
| Subject | American fiction -- 20th century |
| Subject | Stepchildren -- Fiction |
| Subject | Middle-aged men -- Fiction |
| Subject | Americans -- Europe -- Fiction |
| Subject | Families -- Fiction |
| Subject | Children of divorced parents -- Fiction |
| Subject | Stepfamilies -- Fiction |
| Subject | Bachelors -- Fiction |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 76417 |
| Release Date | Jun 29, 2025 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 281 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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