Skip to Main Content (Press Enter) Toggle side nav

A Garden of Earthly Delights

By Joyce Carol Oates
Introduction by Elaine Showalter

By Joyce Carol Oates
Introduction by Elaine Showalter

By Joyce Carol Oates
Introduction by Elaine Showalter

By Joyce Carol Oates
Introduction by Elaine Showalter

Best Seller

Part of The Wonderland Quartet

Part of The Wonderland Quartet

Paperback $18.00

Apr 22, 2003 | ISBN 9780812968347

Ebook $9.99

Mar 25, 2009 | ISBN 9780307525758

All Formats
+
    A Garden of Earthly Delights by Joyce Carol Oates
    Paperback $18.00
    Apr 22, 2003 | ISBN 9780812968347

    Buy from Other Retailers:

    See All Formats (1) +

    Paperback
    –

    • Paperback $18.00

      Apr 22, 2003 | ISBN 9780812968347

      Buy from Other Retailers:

    Ebook
    +

    • Ebook

      Mar 25, 2009 | ISBN 9780307525758

      Buy from Other Retailers:

    Buy the Ebook:

    About A Garden of Earthly Delights

    A masterly work from a writer with “the uncanny ability to give us a cinemascopic vision of her America” (National Review), A Garden of Earthly Delights is the opening stanza in what would become one of the most powerful and engrossing story arcs in literature.

    Joyce Carol Oates’s Wonderland Quartet comprises four remarkable novels that explore social class in America and the inner lives of young Americans. In A Garden of Earthly Delights, Oates presents one of her most memorable heroines, Clara Walpole, the beautiful daughter of Kentucky-born migrant farmworkers. Desperate to rise above her haphazard existence of violence and poverty, determined not to repeat her mother’s life, Clara struggles for independence by way of her relationships with four very different men: her father, a family man turned itinerant laborer, smoldering with resentment; the mysterious Lowry, who rescues Clara as a teenager and offers her the possibility of love; Revere, a wealthy landowner who provides Clara with stability; and Swan, Clara’s son, who bears the psychological and spiritual burden of his mother’s ambition.

    A Garden of Earthly Delights is the first novel in the Wonderland Quartet. The books that complete this acclaimed series, Expensive People, them, and Wonderland, are also available from the Modern Library.

    About A Garden of Earthly Delights

    A masterly work from a writer with “the uncanny ability to give us a cinemascopic vision of her America” (National Review), A Garden of Earthly Delights is the opening stanza in what would become one of the most powerful and engrossing story arcs in literature.

    Joyce Carol Oates’s Wonderland Quartet comprises four remarkable novels that explore social class in America and the inner lives of young Americans. In A Garden of Earthly Delights, Oates presents one of her most memorable heroines, Clara Walpole, the beautiful daughter of Kentucky-born migrant farmworkers. Desperate to rise above her haphazard existence of violence and poverty, determined not to repeat her mother’s life, Clara struggles for independence by way of her relationships with four very different men: her father, a family man turned itinerant laborer, smoldering with resentment; the mysterious Lowry, who rescues Clara as a teenager and offers her the possibility of love; Revere, a wealthy landowner who provides Clara with stability; and Swan, Clara’s son, who bears the psychological and spiritual burden of his mother’s ambition.

    A Garden of Earthly Delights is the first novel in the Wonderland Quartet. The books that complete this acclaimed series, Expensive People, them, and Wonderland, are also available from the Modern Library.

    Read An Excerpt

    Reading Guide

    Read An Excerpt

    Reading Guide

    Also by Joyce Carol Oates

    Dark Screams: Volume Six
    What You Wish For
    Wonderland
    We Were the Mulvaneys
    You Must Remember This
    See all books by Joyce Carol Oates

    Also by Joyce Carol Oates

    Dark Screams: Volume Six
    What You Wish For
    Wonderland
    We Were the Mulvaneys
    You Must Remember This
    See all books by Joyce Carol Oates

    About Joyce Carol Oates

    Joyce Carol Oates has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde (a finalist for the National Book Award), and the New York Times bestsellers The Falls (winner of the 2005 Prix Femina) and The Gravedigger’s Daughter.

    About Joyce Carol Oates

    Joyce Carol Oates has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde (a finalist for the National Book Award), and the New York Times bestsellers The Falls (winner of the 2005 Prix Femina) and The Gravedigger’s Daughter.

    Product Details

    Category: Literary Fiction | Fiction Classics

    Paperback | $18.00
    Published by Modern Library
    Apr 22, 2003 | 448 Pages | 5-3/16 x 8 | ISBN 9780812968347

    Category: Literary Fiction | Fiction Classics

    Ebook | $9.99
    Published by Modern Library
    Mar 25, 2009 | 432 Pages | ISBN 9780307525758

    Inspired by Your Browsing History

    Buy other books like A Garden of Earthly Delights

    ‹ ›
    The Optimist's Daughter
    The Optimist’s Daughter
    Eudora Welty
    Light in August
    Light in August
    William Faulkner
    The Custom of the Country
    The Custom of the Country
    Edith Wharton
    Wonderland
    Wonderland
    Joyce Carol Oates
    Sometimes a Great Notion
    Sometimes a Great Notion
    Ken Kesey
    Jazz
    Jazz
    Toni Morrison
    The World According to Garp
    The World According to Garp
    John Irving
    The Beautiful and Damned
    The Beautiful and Damned
    F. Scott Fitzgerald
    Snopes
    Snopes
    William Faulkner
    The World According to Garp
    The World According to Garp
    John Irving
    Chronicle of a Death Foretold
    Chronicle of a Death Foretold
    Gabriel García Márquez
    Paradise
    Paradise
    Toni Morrison
    Stoner
    Stoner
    John Williams
    The Wedding
    The Wedding
    Dorothy West
    Rabbit, Run
    Rabbit, Run
    John Updike
    A Death in the Family
    A Death in the Family
    James Agee
    The Tortilla Curtain
    The Tortilla Curtain
    T.C. Boyle
    So Long, See You Tomorrow
    So Long, See You Tomorrow
    William Maxwell
    Death Comes for the Archbishop
    Death Comes for the Archbishop
    Willa Cather
    Sophie's Choice
    Sophie’s Choice
    William Styron
    The Hotel New Hampshire
    The Hotel New Hampshire
    John Irving
    Goodbye, Columbus
    Goodbye, Columbus
    Philip Roth
    If Beale Street Could Talk (Movie Tie-In)
    If Beale Street Could Talk (Movie Tie-In)
    James Baldwin
    The Reivers
    The Reivers
    William Faulkner
    Mating
    Mating
    Norman Rush
    The Moon Is Down
    The Moon Is Down
    John Steinbeck
    Summer Crossing
    Summer Crossing
    Truman Capote
    Suttree
    Suttree
    Cormac McCarthy
    Ironweed
    Ironweed
    William Kennedy
    The Spectator Bird
    The Spectator Bird
    Wallace Stegner
    Old School
    Old School
    Tobias Wolff
    Another Country
    Another Country
    James Baldwin

    Praise

    Praise for The Wonderland Quartet

    “Protean and prodigious are surely the words that describe Ms. Oates. From the very beginning, as these impressive and diverse novels make clear, her talents and interests and strengths have never found comfort in fashionable restraint. She’s sought, instead, to do it all—to face and brilliantly, inventively transact and give shape to as much of experience as possible, as if by no other means is a useful and persuasive gesture of moral imagination even conceivable. For us readers these are valuable books.”—Richard Ford

    “These four novels reveal Oates’ powers of observation and invention, her meticulous social documentation joined to her genius for forging unforgettable myths. She is one of the handful of great American novelists of the last hundred years.”—Edmund White

    “This rich, kaleidoscopic suite of novels displays the young Joyce Carol Oates exercising her formidable artistic powers to portray a turbulent twentieth-century America. They offer the reader a singular opportunity to experience some of Oates’s best writing and to witness her development, novel by novel, into one of our finest contemporary writers.”—Greg Johnson, author of Invisible Writer: A Biography of Joyce Carol Oates

    Looking for More Great Reads?
    21 Books You’ve Been Meaning to Read
    Get the latest updates from Joyce Carol Oates
    And go from well-read to best read with book recs, deals and more in your inbox every week.
    And go from well-read to best read with book recs, deals and more in your inbox every week.
    By clicking SIGN UP, I acknowledge that I have read and agree to Penguin Random House’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
    Dismiss
    Thanks!
    Something awesome is on its way.
    Back to Top

    Visit other sites in the Penguin Random House Network

    Raise kids who love to read

    Brightly

    Raise kids who love to read
    Today's Top Books

    Today's Top Books

    Want to know what people are actually reading right now?
    An online magazine for today’s home cook

    TASTE

    An online magazine for today’s home cook