While Wadey's BBC ending was at the heart of the controversy, both Mainwaring's and Wadey's endings were heavily criticized for their "sensationalism" and perceived lack of "trueness" to Wharton's style of work and both writers independently made the claims that they sought to romanticize and "Americanize" the story, despite it having been penned by American novelist Wharton to explore the intersections and clashes of class, commerce and marriage in Old and New World cultures and high society. A companion book to the BBC series was published by Viking in 1995 (). For this book, Angela Mackworth-Young revised and completed the novel based on the screenplay of Maggie Wadey.