&quot;The Touchstone&quot; was published in 1900, and was Edith Wharton&rsquo;s first novella. It was also the first of her many stories describing life in old New York.<br /><br />&quot;The Touchstone&quot; shows off the skills Wharton became famous for in novels such as &quot;Ethan Frome&quot; and &quot;House of Mirth&quot;, particularly her piercing and delicious talent for satiric observation. But despite its masterly control, this startlingly modern tale is also a simmering, rebel cri de coeur unleashed by a writer who was herself unappreciated in her own time. The combination of these attributes make this edgy novella a moving and suspenseful homage to the power of literature itself.<br /><br />The basic requirements of the novella form are that it should be short, concentrated, centred on a single theme, with few characters, and tightly focused in terms of time scale, characters, and location. &quot;The Touchstone&quot; fulfils all these requirements.<br /><br />Stephen Glennard, the novella&#39;s protagonist, is suddenly impoverished and unable to marry the woman he loves. He sells the private letters a former admirer had written to him, before she had become a famous author. He is later overcome by guilt for betraying one who had loved him.