Considered by some to be her finest work, Edith Whartons Summer created a sensation when first published in 1917, as it was one of the first novels to deal honestly with a young womans sexual awakening.Summer is the story of Charity Royall, a child of mountain moonshiners adopted by a family in a poor New England town, who has a passionate love affair with Lucius Harney, an educated man from the city. Wharton broke the conventions of womens romantic fiction by making Charity a thoroughly independent modern womanin touch with her emotions and sexuality, yet kept from love and the larger world she craves by the overwhelming pressures of heredity and society.Praised for its realism and honesty by such writers as Joseph Conrad and Henry James and compared to Flauberts Madame Bovary, Summer remains as fresh and powerful a novel today as when it was first written.