Beginning in a boys’ school, the novel follows a group of schoolfellows and the young heiress Hope Wayne as they grow up into the fashionable and commercial New York of the mid-nineteenth century. Prosperous merchants in white cravats, ambitious young men like Abel Newt, and mercenary marriages show a society that plays every card for advantage.
A satirical portrait of antebellum New York by the editor and reformer best known for his Harper’s essays. Download the free EPUB.