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