The Buccaneers

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The Buccaneers is the last novel written by Edith Wharton. It was unfinished at the time of her death in 1937, and published in that form in 1938. After careful study of the synopsis and notes, Wharton scholar Marion Mainwaring finished the novel, which was published by Viking Press in 1993. Independently, the same year the BBC hired screenwriter Maggie Wadey to adapt and finish the novel for a television serial adaptation, which was produced by the BBC and American PBS broadcaster WGBH, and screened on BBC One in the UK and in the Masterpiece Theatre strand in the United States, airing in 1995. As a result the novel has two different endings. A previous television series was produced by ITC Entertainment in 1956.

The story revolves around five wealthy and ambitious American girls and their guardians. They participate in the London Season in search of a titled English gentleman for matrimonial purposes, and of the titled, land-rich but cash-poor Englishmen who marry them.

It is a story of the values and morals held by fashionable society at that particular time, when it was considered more important to marry for social position rather than romantic love. The novel is also a poignant example of art imitating life, since one of the storylines does closely resemble the real story of the ill-fated marriage of heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt and the Duke of Marlborough.