This is Edith Wharton's second book. Consider reading other novels by Wharton, especially The Age of Innocence (1920) and The Custom of the Country (1913).
The book is considered to be a "novel of manners." Other notable novels of the genre are the novels of Jane Austen, Vanity Fair by William Thackeray, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and the novels of Henry James.
Other writers who similarly employed irony and satire in their literary style, as well as criticism of what they saw as the hypocrisy of the upper class, include Muriel Spark and Evelyn Waugh.
