This little novella is part of a series written by Wharton called Old New York. There are four pieces in the series, each set in one decade of the 1800s. I wish I’d known this before reading it, because I would have preferred to read them in order as a set. The copy I have includes only the final novella.

• False Dawn (The 'Forties)
• The Old Maid (The 'Fifties)
• The Spark (The 'Sixties)
• New Year's Day (The 'Seventies)

Society is scandalized by an assumed affair between a married woman, Lizzie, and a man named Henry. Wharton seems to specialize is creating women scorned by society. In The Age of Innocence we have Countess Ellen Olenska, in The House of Mirth it’s Lily Bart. Each woman is exiled from society for one reason or another and in New Year’s Day it’s Lizzie.

Yet society never really knows the details behind the scandals and Lizzie is unfairly judged. The double standard for men and women in these situations is particularly disturbing. We find out that Lizzie had her reasons for doing what she did. Her life may not have been a happy one, but she loved her husband very deeply and when she finds out he is ill she is willing to do anything to make his final years happy ones.

BOTTOM LINE: A potent little story of regret, but I would love to read the complete Old New York series.

“…they remained in town on the first of January, and marked the day by a family reunion, a kind of supplementary Christmas.”

“The truth was, of course, that it [her chief charm] lay in her sincerity; in her humble yet fearless estimate of her own qualities and short-comings.” ( )