Aside from her Pulitzer Prize-winning talent as a novel writer, Edith Wharton also distinguished herself as a short story

writer, publishing more than seventy-two stories in ten volumes during her lifetime. The best of her short fiction is

collected here in Roman Fever and Other Stories. From her picture of erotic love and illegitimacy in the title story to her

exploration of the aftermath of divorce detailed in "Souls Belated" and "The Last Asset," Wharton shows her usual skill

"in dissecting the elements of emotional subtleties, moral ambiguities, and the implications of social restrictions," as

Cynthia Griffin Wolff writes in her introduction. Roman Fever and Other Stories is a surprisingly contemporary volume

of stories by one of our most enduring writers.