A Lost Work By Edith Wharton Rediscovered

Acculturated ^ | May 30, 2017 | Editor

[Tax-chick]

Discovery of a misplaced work by an important American author.

[Tax-chick]

I don’t know who else will be interested in a recovered work by Edith Wharton, but I figured you would be.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Tagline

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Always, yes!

I ran across and bought copy of her "Italian Villas and Their Gardens" at a garage sale.

I thought the author's name was familiar but didn't know until later it was THE Edith Wharton.

[Tax-chick]

She was famous for garden design in the South of France and in New England.

Imagine what she might have accomplished with a Women’s Studies Professor haircut like mine!

[Mrs. Don-o]

Or a nun-cut like mine?

[Rebelbase]

Where was it discovered?

[Tax-chick]

at the Harry Ransom Center, a repository for rare manuscripts in Austin, Texas, where Rattray and Chinery found two copies of it in the Playscripts and Promptbooks Collection.

The researchers had seen a reference to the play's being removed from production in a New York Times archive.

[MinuteGal]

Edith Wharton was a prolific writer of novels, short stories, verse and plays (mostly unproduced).

Her best-known work is "The Age of Innocence", a novel set in upper-class New York City in the 1870's during the American "Gilded Era" (a time in American history noted for serious social and poverty problems masked by a thin "gilding" of much-flaunted wealth and prosperity of the country's upper classes.

Wharton was the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature in 1927, 1928 and 1930.

Actually, this is a fascinating time in American literature. Wharton's peers, friends and confidants were literary notables such as Henry James, Sinclair Lewis, Jean Cocteau, Andre Gide and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Her biography alone is an absorbing read...and a good resume of her life can be found on Wikipedia.

The Gilded Age authors wrote fascinating pieces on the manners, mores, caste systems and psychology of this rather forgotten era of American history.

Leni

[SE Mom]

Glad I caught this headline!

[Liz]

She is one of my favorite authors....I’ve scoured used book sales to get ahold of her lesser-known tomes.

“Ethan Frome” is possibly the best novel ever written.....and my all-time fave.

[BunnySlippers]

Me, a big fan. Along with Henry James.

[Tax-chick]

I like Henry James okay, but I like Edith Wharton better. I’m also fond of Willa Cather.

[Tax-chick]

So am I!

I rarely post a thread, but I thought this was big news ;-).

[SE Mom]

Yes, and his brother William wrote an extraordinary book called “Varieties of Religious Experience”. Several versions of it have been printed and some are dreadful but the book is amazing.

I love Wharton, have almost everything she wrote.

[SE Mom]

Oh yes, Willa Cather! My Antonia...

And Maugham, Forester, Chesterton, some Kipling and a little Eliot.

I have tried probably ten times to read Joyce. I am incapable of reading stream of conciousness literature. At my age I don’t intend to pursue it further;)

[x]

Fans might want to visit her house, The Mount, in Lenox, Massachusetts.

As you can imagine the upkeep on a place like this is substantial, and they've had trouble keeping the place standing and open to the public down through the years.

[trisham]

Beautiful.

[Tax-chick]

I read “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” in school. Meh.

[Tax-chick]

Excellent garden.