Ethan Frome

For years she had found partial release in literature: in “Hamlet,” in “Ethan Frome,” with the “delirious descent” of its attempted suicide, which she read aloud to herself over and over.

That austere masterpiece “Ethan Frome” stands in a room all by itself; it is an illustration, however, of the fact that our novelist, who knows Paris and the Continental urban scenes so well, was equally at home in a barren American village.

To be fair, it’s clear that in writing “Mr. Fullerton” — a play about Wharton, Henry James and their mutual inamorato, Morton Fullerton — Anne Undeland was as besotted as I am by the steely author of classic novels including “The Age of Innocence,” “Ethan Frome” and “The House of Mirth.”

Coming out of the affair she produced “Ethan Frome.”

Though Posy is an invention, readers of “Ethan Frome” will immediately recognize the story of the sledding accident from the climax of the novel.