Twilight Sleep

Rediscover Edith Warton’s take on modern motherhood with a stunning keepsake edition from Smith & Taylor Classics, with sharp and humorous stories that feel as relevant today as it did in the 1920s.

Mrs. Pauline Manford is a busy woman, as any upstanding New York society lady should be.

To manage a modern household is to hold the family together, staying on trend with all things helpful, but her daughter has horrible taste in married men, her ex-husband is unwell, and her son is struggling to forge a career for himself while his postpartum wife refuses to settle down from lavish partying. Pauline can’t decide if she should bob her hair, redecorate, or get a face lift, and she surely doesn’t have time to notice her current husband’s wandering eye as anything other than harmless flirtations.

When a rakish Italian actor bound for Hollywood and a scandal with the local wellness guru threaten to tear her perfectly constructed life apart, Pauline moves on to new spiritually medicinal treatments, and the Manfords must navigate the fraught tensions that bind them together. Hopefully a vacation from NYC’s ruthless grind to their quiet country house will deter any further worries.

Featuring a conversational afterword from editors Brandon Taylor and Allison Miriam Smith.