The Touchstone

The Touchstone is a novella by Edith Wharton, first published in 1900.

In turn-of-the-century New York, Stephen Glennard longs to marry but lacks the means. He possesses a cache of intimate letters from the late, celebrated writer Margaret Aubyn and decides to sell them for publication.

As the letters ignite a public sensation, the windfall curdles into secrecy, jealousy, and self-reproach. Glennard’s new life grows fragile under the pressure of conscience and self-deception, while the marketplace’s hunger for gossip exposes the commodification of intimacy and the corrosive cost of success.

Spare, incisive, and unsentimental, the novella showcases Wharton’s early command of psychological realism and social critique. With elegant restraint, it turns a scandal into an ethical parable about money, marriage, and the price of a compromised self.

"GLENNARD dropped the Spectator and sat looking into the fire. The club was filling up, but he still had to himself the small inner room with its darkening outlook down the rain-streaked prospect of Fifth Avenue."