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The Buccaneers

A Novel

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The Buccaneers

By: Edith Wharton, Marion Mainwaring
Narrated by: Carol Monda
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About this listen

 Edith Wharton's spellbinding final novel tells a story of love in the gilded age that crosses the boundaries of society—now an original series on AppleTV+!

“Brave, lively, engaging...a fairy-tale novel, miraculouly returned to life.”—The New York Times Book Review

Set in the 1870s, the same period as Wharton's The Age of Innocence, The Buccaneers is about five wealthy American girls denied entry into New York Society because their parents' money is too new. At the suggestion of their clever governess, the girls sail to London, where they marry lords, earls, and dukes who find their beauty charming—and their wealth extremely useful.

After Wharton's death in 1937, The Christian Science Monitor said, "If it could have been completed, The Buccaneers would doubtless stand among the richest and most sophisticated of Wharton's novels." Now, with wit and imagination, Marion Mainwaring has finished the story, taking her cue from Wharton's own synopsis. It is a novel any Wharton fan will celebrate and any romantic reader will love. This is the richly engaging story of Nan St. George and Guy Thwarte, an American heiress and an English aristocrat, whose love breaks the rules of both their societies. Classics Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Fiction Money

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Critic reviews

Praise for The Buccaneers

“Brave, lively, engaging...a fairy-tale novel, miraculouly returned to life.”—The New York Times Book Review

“The Buccaneers brilliantly showcases Wharton near the top of her form.”—Chicago Tribune

“Mainwaring has added gloss to the story's original elegance and wit, and the novel emerges like a master's painting from the hands of a highly skilled restorer.”—Leon Edel, author of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning Henry James: A Life

“Mainwaring's version of The Buccaneers is a tour de force....[She] deserves high marks for her ingenuity, novelistic skill, and critical intelligence.”—USA Today

“A sense of unobtrusive accuracy of tone and detail prevails throughout Ms. Mainwaring's [writing]....It's hard to imagine a better writer equipped to take on Edith Wharton.”—The Wall Street Journal
All stars
Most relevant
First Wharton story I've listened to and I'd make time for it daily. A great performance for an incredibly entertaining classic

An incredibly entertaining story

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I don’t usually like modern books but this being from the late 19th Century is quite an exceptional.

This book was full of surprise information about the period I thoroughly enjoyed it.

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Disliked narrator which marred my enjoyment of the book. It's a heavy smoker's voice and her switch to 'English' accents was shrill and quite poor. I'd wince whenever she was doing individual character's voices. Will avoid any future recordings which use her, I'm afraid.

Poor narrator

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My enjoyment of this brilliant tale was marred by the narrator's harsh, grating voice and by her grotesque mispronunciations, especially of words in languages other than English. Her attempts at rendering upper-class English speech were lamentable.

wharton at her best let down by narrator

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Edith Wharton in my opinion remains under appreciated, and this last unfinished novel is worthy of an authors respectful attempt to allow readers to enjoy the work. Mainwairing is respectful of her co author and in many ways (language, sensibilities etc) proves a decent collaborator. But for me, the endings/s felt a little rushed and too clean and tidy. I suspect they were written with a publishers pressure to keep them on the happy side! They just didn’t fully ring true for me. But as I say, a valiant effort and one which I appreciate as it gave me the opportunity to enjoy more of my favourite author: Edith Wharton.

Wharton is worth it…

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