The Buccaneers: BBC Tie-In Edition

The Buccaneers: BBC Tie-In Edition
The official companion edition to PBS Masterpiece Theater production, to air in fall 1995, of the unfinished novel--the author's last--features color photographs from the television series. 50,000 first printing. National ad/promo. TV tie-in.
Customer Review: Delightful
I loved the language and the characterisation. The characters appear "real" from the moment they show up, and you can't help but cheer for these girls to find happinness. The book is a wonderful window to New York and London society at the time. Fascinating.
Customer Review: "You're a gang of buccaneers, you [Americans] are."
Unfinished at the time of Edith Wharton's death in 1937, The Buccaneers was later completed by Marian Mainwaring and published in 1993. Set in the late nineteenth century, it is a story in which newly rich American girls go to London for "the season" and to find husbands. Like the novels of Henry James, one of Wharton's friends, it stresses the contrast between the values of new American society and those of the long-established society of Europe, setting the bright enthusiasms of the Americans against the ritualized behaviors of upperclass Londoners, the freedoms of the Americans against the social and familial obligations of the Europeans. The daughters of the St. George and Elmsworth families have been snubbed by New York society for the newness of their wealth, and when their friend Conchita Closson marries a member of the British nobility, they follow her to England, intending to participate in "the season" and perhaps find husbands of their own. Though the older girls sometimes compete for the same suitors and are preoccupied with the superficialities of society, the youngest St. George sister, Nan, still retains her carefree spirit, her innocence, and her zest for life. Wharton completed about three-fifths of the novel before her death, leaving a plot outline for the remainder of the novel. More melodramatic than most of her other novels, The Buccaneers is filled with domestic intrigues, as straightforward but remarkably naïve American heiresses are wooed by faithless suitors who need funds to support their traditional lifestyles. Nan's courtship and marriage become the emotional and dramatic focus of the last part of the novel. The point at which Mainwaring begins writing is obvious. Though she follows the plot summary which Wharton left behind, her language is less elegant and less formal, her emphasis on the sexual aspects of the relationships more blatant. Marriage, when viewed by the participants as a social responsibility, rather than as a free, romantic choice, leads to the opportunistic marriages we see here, with one partner gaining at the expense of the other. Women take lovers, withhold sexual favors from their husbands--and talk about everyone else who does what they are doing. Trapped in stultifying relationships, they gain social acceptance at the expense of their freedom and happiness. The ending, filled with ironies, is unique among Wharton's novels, feeling more like a Gothic romance than Wharton's usual social commentary. n Mary Whipple