Bunner Sisters

Originally published in 1916, but actually written in 1890, „Bunner Sisters” is a compelling, heartbreaking little novella about two sisters, who have never been apart, struggling to eek an existence as small shopkeepers on the margins of late nineteenth-century society in New York. They barely make enough money to live on. But when Ann Eliza the elder buys Evelina the younger a clock that does not work for her birthday, the sisters commence a relationship with Herbert Ramy, who operates a „queer little” shop, setting in motion a series of events that will prove to be everyone’s undoing. Edith Wharton provides a vivid description of the life of shop keepers and their friends in the poorer urban areas of New York City.