A Backward Glance

by Edith Wharton

This antiquarian volume contains 'A Backward Glance', Edith Wharton's detailed account of her life, both pubic and private. She describes in a dazzling yet delicate manner, the upper-class New York society within which much of her youth was spent. The book details her traversing of Europe and her prolific achievement in the field of literature when she was an adult. A fantastic and insightful read, this text will appeal to those with an interest in this most accomplished woman, and it would make for a worthy addition to any bookshelf. The chapters of this text include: The Background, Knee-High, Little Girl, Unreluctant Feet, Friendships and Travels, Life and Letters, New York and the Mount, Henry James, The Secret Garden, Paris, Widening Waters, The War, and more. This book is being republished now in an affordable, modern edition complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography, Autobiography, Classics, Biography Memoir, History

434 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1934

About the author

Edith Wharton emerged as one of America’s most insightful novelists, deftly exposing the tensions between societal expectation and personal desire through her vivid portrayals of upper-class life. Drawing from her deep familiarity with New York’s privileged “aristocracy,” she offered readers a keenly observed and piercingly honest vision of Gilded Age society.
Her work reached a milestone when she became the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, awarded for The Age of Innocence. This novel highlights the constraining rituals of 1870s New York society and remains a defining portrait of elegance laced with regret.
Wharton’s literary achievements span a wide canvas. The House of Mirth presents a tragic, vividly drawn character study of Lily Bart, navigating social expectations and the perils of genteel poverty in 1890s New York. In Ethan Frome, she explores rural hardship and emotional repression, contrasting sharply with her urban social dramas.
Her novella collection Old New York revisits the moral terrain of upper-class society, spanning decades and combining character studies with social commentary. Through these stories, she inevitably points back to themes and settings familiar from The Age of Innocence. Continuing her exploration of class and desire, The Glimpses of the Moon addresses marriage and social mobility in early 20th-century America. And in Summer, Wharton challenges societal norms with its rural setting and themes of sexual awakening and social inequality.
Beyond fiction, Wharton contributed compelling nonfiction and travel writing. The Decoration of Houses reflects her eye for design and architecture; Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belfort presents a compelling account of her wartime observations. As editor of The Book of the Homeless, she curated a moving, international collaboration in support of war refugees.
Wharton’s influence extended beyond writing. She designed her own country estate, The Mount, a testament to her architectural sensibility and aesthetic vision. The Mount now stands as an educational museum celebrating her legacy.
Throughout her career, Wharton maintained friendships and artistic exchanges with luminaries such as Henry James, Sinclair Lewis, Jean Cocteau, André Gide, and Theodore Roosevelt—reflecting her status as a respected and connected cultural figure.
Her literary legacy also includes multiple Nobel Prize nominations, underscoring her international recognition. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature more than once.
In sum, Edith Wharton remains celebrated for her unflinching, elegant prose, her psychological acuity, and her capacity to illuminate the unspoken constraints of society—from the glittering ballrooms of New York to quieter, more remote settings. Her wide-ranging work—novels, novellas, short stories, poetry, travel writing, essays—offers cultural insight, enduring emotional depth, and a piercing critique of the customs she both inhabited and dissected.

Reviews

[Duane Parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edith Wharton was one of the best writers of the 20th century. The excellence of her entire body of work ranks her right up there with the best of her era. In this volume she takes a look back at her own life; the novels, her marriage, her friends, and her life as an American living in Paris. Her good friend, Henry James, wrote the introduction, and it's a must read for anyone who is a fan of Wharton's novels.

[Khush · Rating 5 out of 5]

'A Backward Glance' is an amazing read. While Edith Wharton's book is not 'tell it all,' it does not disappoint. After all how much can one tell about oneself! She is selective about what she reveals.

There is one whole chapter on Henry James which I have adored. Strangely enough. This particular chapter gives a wonderful glimpse of James, the person. There are certain things mentioned about him that I found endearing. I hoped that she would talk about his books; however, she refrains from doing so. In the succeeding chapter, 'The Secret Garden' she writes about her own writing and how she struggled with it. I loved reading it. This might be of some value for the budding writers.

Since I have not read any of her fiction, in her non-fiction she comes across as someone who is elitist and moves only in select circles. This fact amuses me. Two chapters are exclusively written about her time spent in London and Paris. She prefers Paris of the times far more than London. Only because private gatherings in Paris means meeting the same elite over and over again. These small elitist communities fortify themselves against the rest. In London, she always felt as if she were at a train-station looking at strangers. Each evening has unknown people coming in and so forth.

What is unique about the book is her language. Athough the world described in it is more than hundred years old, the way it is done feels contemporary. In short, the language is fresh. Edith Wharton, being such an elitist, might prefer the word 'exquisite' for her language than the ordinary-sounding word 'fresh.'

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Backward Glance: An Autobiography takes readers up to 1934, but Wharton's account of the years post-1918 barely amount to an epilogue. She is not desolate, she still draws from her usual sources of joy. Writing, reading, the conversation of a circle of brilliant though fast-dwindling friends, travel, especially yachting the Aegean and motoring in far reaches (given her identification with the French elite, I found it perfect that her exploration of Morocco was smoothed by none other than General Lyautey). But, she says, life is not the same, many have died, much is ended. Her account of Henry James' decline and death during the war, in a nightmare of empathetic anguish, is hard reading:

I have never seen any one else who, without a private personal stake in that awful struggle, suffered from it as he did. He had not my solace of hard work, though he did all he had strength for, and gave all the pecuniary help he could. But it was not enough. His devouring imagination was never at rest, and the agony was more than he could bear. As far as I know the only letters of mine which he kept were those in which I described my various journeys to the front, and when these were sent back to me after his death they were worn with much handing about. His sensitiveness about his own physical disabilities gave him an exaggerated idea of what his friends were able to do, and he never tired of talking of what he regarded as their superhuman activities. But still the black cloud hung over the world, and to him it was soon to be a pall. Perhaps it was better so. I should have liked to have him standing beside me the day the victorious armies rode by; but when I think of the years intervening between his death and that brief burst of radiance I have not the heart to wish that he had seen it. The waiting would have been too bitter.

[Sketchbook · Rating 2 out of 5]

EW's coy "autobiography," written in the mid30s, contains a lot of bunkum. As much as I appreciate her novels, her debutante preening is often vexing. She constantly refers to her husband and never mentions that they were divorced in 1913. When she observes that after "The House of Mirth" was published (1905) "my husband and I decided to exchange our little house in NY for a flat in Paris," we know that the hovel accommodated 3-4 servants and could be divided into 6 apartments.

Edie needs a villa in Paris to replace "the emptiness of life in a hotel." Meanwhile, off to the French and Italian Rivieras. Salons and parties with "my dear friend the Marquis de Segur," or Comte Alexandre de Laborde - aah, the pre-war society of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. The name of Morton Fullerton, the American journalist who allegedly gave her a Lady Chatterley thrill, is omitted from this memoir. (It should really be called Impressions). The company Edie kept was mostly men, brilliant aesthetes like Henry James, Walter Berry, Howard Sturgis -- professional "bachelors." However, her portrait of James is genuinely warm and admirable. Advised that a boat for England sails from Boston in two days, Henry whinges that Lud! he couldnt possibly pack and get from the Mount (a few hours away) to Boston in a mere two days! He'd need at least four days. Say no more.... Wharton gives a sympathique study of the very rich/very gay Sturgis (she's blinkered) who was deeply wounded that James didnt like his fascinating novel, "Belchamber."

She also includes a Fun Fact : in France, at a dinner party, the "host and hostess sit opposite one another in the middle of the table." Or did pre-war. I'm told Hearst did the same at San Simeon. Guests descend, r and l, in dwindling importance.

"Life is the saddest thing there is, next to death," she concludes in the last lines. (Edie, pls take off your corset). She won prizes, was acclaimed for her best-sellers, made dozens of luxe transatlantic crossings First Class, had stately homes here and there, chartered yachts, and, frankly, never sat still - until she died in 1937.

Post-war1 America offended her. She couldnt bear to see any breakup of the social and class structure that enhanced her Gilded Age. Dont misunderstand my irreverence. Edie was a lady. Her stories capture a prehistoric period. It seems she and Fullerton could never get-it-on because her servants were always about. Elsewhere we read they finally pulled the shades in London at the Charing Cross Hotel. I hope it went beyond frottage.

[Hamish · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a little confused by some of the criticism of this here on Goodreads. It's a memoir, not an autobiography, which may seem like splitting hairs, but the whole point of a memoir is that you share bits and pieces of your life that you feel are worth relating, not the whole thing. So yeah, she leaves out her divorce and many other important events, but the point is that she's trying to focus on more pleasant memories. However, this brings its own drawbacks. Too often these memories just amount to a list of people she knew or various anecdotes that were probably funny at the time but left me a little cold. But as always, her prose is fantastic and as a result it's still pretty pleasant to read.

It's hard to not compare A Backward Glance to Speak, Memory. Nabokov and Wharton were both insufferably aristocratic and they were both fantastic prose stylists. The main difference is that Nabokov made his world seem real and beautiful, while Wharton's seems strangely distant. Her aristocratic snobbishness is pretty amusing at times, though (at one point she relates that Melville wasn't welcome in high society because of his "deplorable bohemianism"). It's also interesting, because in her novels she seemed extremely sympathetic to the plight of women in society and the poor in rural New England, but here she reveals that she was incredibly dismissive and condescending to the latter and held views that are pretty incompatible with feminism. She was a complex lady.

P.S. On her great grandfather’s estate: “It stood, as its name suggests, on a terraced height in what is now the dreary waste of Astoria[.]” :((((

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wharton's writing is every bit as clear and lucid as in her novels, and I really liked the look at her own life and background. I especially liked her understated wit and her early amazement at becoming a well-known writer, which makes her seem very human and approachable; here's a favorite passage: "I had written short stories that were thought worthy of preservation! Was it the same insignificant I that I had always known? Any one walking along the streets might go into any bookshop, and say: 'Please give me Edith Wharton's book'; and the clerk, without bursting into incredulous laughter, would produce it, and be paid for it, and the purchaser would walk home with it and read it, and talk of it, and pass it on to other people to read!"

[Jackie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Edith Wharton is one of my favorite authors, and I've been waiting to read this autobiography since I saw all of the great reviews when it first came out. It certainly did not disappoint-- chock full of insights about the books and Wharton's life without being too confessional.

[TBV (on hiatus) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edith Wharton’s memoir is a gem. It is an interesting first hand account of life in New York City towards the end of the nineteenth century through the first part of the twentieth century. It contains the thoughts and the memories of a life rich in reading and writing, in travel and in dear friends.

The memoir is not a chronological autobiography; it is a collection of thoughts and memories of various topics, events and people. Ms Wharton is gracious and affectionate throughout. She is modest without being coy about her capabilities. She has an excellent sense of humour plus the wonderful capacity of being able to laugh at herself.

For someone who professed to be uninterested in celebrities, she certainly attended many dinners and luncheons hosted by celebrated hostesses and attended by the rich and famous. However, it is invariably on the quality of their conversation that she focuses rather than on the fashion of the day or any wealth on display.

Edith Wharton (1862-1937)

by Edward Harrison May

###
Language, reading and writing
One of the first topics she tackles is Language. Her mother’s family had traditionally had excellent well-educated tutors, and from a very early age Edith was taught the importance of speaking well.
“I used to say that I had been taught only two things in my childhood: the modern languages and good manners. Now that I have lived to see both these branches of culture dispensed with, I perceive that there are worse systems of education.”
“Bringing-up in those days was based on what was called 'good breeding.' One was polite, considerate of others, careful of the accepted formulas, because such were the principles of the well-bred. And probably the regard of my parents for the niceties of speech was a part of their breeding. They treated their language with the same rather ceremonious courtesy as their friends.”
#
Little Edith had access to her father’s library, but permission was required prior to reading any novel.
“I was never allowed to read the popular American children's books of my day because, as my mother said, the children spoke bad English without the author's knowing it.”
“We all knew by heart 'Alice in Wonderland,' 'The Hunting of the Snark,' and whole pages of Lear's 'Nonsense Book,' and our sensitiveness to the quality of the English we spoke doubled our enjoyment of the incredible verbal gymnastics of those immortal works.”
“I was forbidden to read Whyte Melville, Rhoda Broughton, 'The Duchess,' and all the lesser novelists of the day; but before me stretched the wide expanse of the classics, English, French and German, and into that sea of wonders I plunged at will.”
#
Certainly she has much to say about writing.
“I never cared much in my little childhood for fairy tales, or any appeals to my fancy through the fabulous or legendary. My imagination lay there, coiled and sleeping, a mute hibernating creature, and at the least touch of common things--flowers, animals, words, especially the sound of words, apart from their meaning--it already stirred in its sleep, and then sank back into its own rich dream, which needed so little feeding from the outside that it instinctively rejected whatever another imagination had already adorned and completed.”
“I cannot remember the time when I did not want to 'make up' stories. But it was in Paris that I found the necessary formula.”

She talks about writing her books, both fiction and non-fiction, but she doesn’t discuss them in depth as that is not the object of her exercise.

Of her fictional characters she says:
“From the first I know exactly what is going to happen to every one of them; their fate is settled beyond rescue, and I have but to watch and record.”


Travels, homes and gardens
“Perhaps, after all, it is not a bad thing to begin one's travels at four.” Ms Wharton travelled a great deal, and also lived abroad from time to time. One of her early writing successes (1904) was ‘Italian Villas and their Gardens'. (Due to an interest in things Italian, I purchased a paperback edition of this book long before I knew who Edith Wharton was.) She had a great interest in home decoration and gardens, and one of her first books was ‘The Decoration of Houses’ (1897). Here is a picture of her home 'The Mount' in Massachusetts:

The Mount, Massachusetts


Friends
She mentions many people whom she met, but I won’t go into any details here.
“What is one's personality, detached from that of the friends with whom fate happens to have linked one? I cannot think of myself apart from the influence of the two or three greatest friendships of my life, and any account of my own growth must be that of their stimulating and enlightening influence.”

What stands out is her friendship with author Henry James, and it is clear this this friendship is of great importance to her. She reveals much about the great man and relates some very humorous incidents, but it is always admiring and affectionate rather than gossipy.
“Perhaps it was our common sense of fun that first brought about our understanding. The real marriage of true minds is for any two people to possess a sense of humour or irony pitched in exactly the same key, so that their joint glances at any subject cross like interarching search-lights. I have had good friends between whom and myself that bond was lacking, but they were never really intimate friends; and in that sense Henry James was perhaps the most intimate friend I ever had, though in many ways we were so different.”
#
“To James's intimates, however, these elaborate hesitancies, far from being an obstacle, were like a cobweb bridge flung from his mind to theirs, an invisible passage over which one knew that silver-footed ironies, veiled jokes, tiptoe malices, were stealing to explode a huge laugh at one's feet. This moment of suspense, in which there was time to watch the forces of malice and merriment assembling over the mobile landscape of his face, was perhaps the rarest of all in the unique experience of a talk with Henry James.”
#
“As I write I yearn back to those lost hours, all the while aware that those who read of them must take their gaiety, their jokes and laughter, on faith, yet unable to detach my memory from them, and loath not to give others a glimpse of that jolliest of comrades, the laughing, chaffing, jubilant yet malicious James, who was so different from the grave personage known to less intimate eyes.”


War
Edith’s memoir describes what life was like immediately before WWI. It seemed inconceivable that there could be war or that it could last for long.
“It seemed as if those years contained some generative fire which called forth masterpieces; for close on Isadora, and on Diaghilew's dancers, came Proust's first volume.”

Edith was in Paris when war was declared, and she made a substantial contribution to the aid effort.

###

“Meanwhile I felt like some homeless waif who, after trying for years to take out naturalization papers, and being rejected by every country, has finally acquired a nationality. The Land of Letters was henceforth to be my country, and I gloried in my new citizenship.”

###
Edith Wharton, I am becoming fond of you…

[Sparrow .]

The word “thwarted” comes to mind. There’s something thwarted about Edith’s book, or life, or both. Let me open it at random:

“Having married early, and been soon left a widower, he had lived for many years in Paris; but his children were growing up, the time had come for his sons to enter Harvard, and the year of my marriage he returned to New York, where he had built himself a charming house. Besides being an ardent bibliophile he was a discriminating collector of works of art, especially of the eighteenth century, and his house was the first in New York in which an educated taste had replaced stuffy upholstery and rubbishy ‘ornaments’ with objects of real beauty in a simply designed setting.”

You see what I mean? In case you’re dying to know, she’s writing about a person named Egerton Winthrop.

Part II

Now I realize why the word "thwarted" came to mind: it's in her name:

Edi thWhart on

[Ann-marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found this book by accident at a used book store. It reads slowly, but she's fun to listen to, a Victorian diction, true 'old-school' manner. It was like visiting with an old aunt. As a feminist, it reminded me that it was not so long ago that women were not encouraged to have a career of any sort, and that many of us were functionally illiterate, even the wealthy.

[Kirsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

[1934] Notes to self…Fan of her work so enjoyed getting to know her a little more through this autobiography. Reminds me of the Stefan Zweig memoir that I just read. Both successful writers of some renown, both describing where they were when they heard that Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated, and both described their friends and others they encountered with such kindness and warm respect, I feel certain that they would have been fast friends had their time and place had ever intersected. Seems like a kind and grounded person, and what an amazing life she led, splitting her time between the U.S. and Europe. Realize how much I love this late nineteenth, early twentieth century time period. Loved seeing how much of her novels came from the society she knew. Loved the in-depth coverage of her friendship with Henry James, but probably a little more detail than I needed on many of her other friendships with people I wasn’t familiar with.

[Annabelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why 5 stars, why the heart? Why, indeed. Why, if only for the first few pages, I would give this book 10 stars! Wharton's star shines brightest when she explains what to expect from this memoir, and why: every other sentence and paragraph stands out as a quotable quote. Clearly she was blessed with the knack for storytelling, and had an affinity with books long before she could even read--her gift of imagery and pretend, of having her characters literally introduce themselves to her with complete names, addresses and professions (or lack thereof) calls to mind Mozart's magic--"music from God," to hear Dr Yeou-Cheng Ma describe it. The result: effortless, "real" stories. While she does tend to ramble on about Henry James, this is excusable, as she also highlights her great friendships with other notable intellectuals and raconteurs of her day. It's interesting to note how most of her closest friendships were with older or much younger men. Little known were her contributions to the war effort. Anglophile/Francophile? Yes. Also, most certainly a literary snob. That's my Edith!

[Gwynhwyfar · Rating 1 out of 5]

Some people accused John Galsworthy, author of a similar "Study of manners",The Forsyte Saga, of being a hypocritical member of the very class he criticized. I will save that argument for another time, but I think it very much applies to Wharton. This autobiography is little more than a romp down memory lane, from her giddy, embarrassingly girlish descriptions of her Victorian clothing and even bonnets, as a child and outings with her beloved father.

Just when people like Henry James are introduced and she starts traveling and hanging out with literati in Newport, we think, "Oh! Finally, something interesting!" But no. All we get are little, nitpicking details about James' eccentricities, written with condescending affection, and supposedly humorous, yet omniscient anecdotes about her "knowledge" of the "hill folk" of the Berkshires, once she gets her summer mansion, "The Mount", in Lenox, Massachusetts.

This supposed intimacy is a figment of Wharton's self-impressed imagination, and almost as boring as her name-dropping list of European celebrities and nobility while touring ancient castles and villas in Italy, whose detail she somehow glosses over in favor of other cute anecdotes about her hair getting messed up as she drives in her infuriating motor car over bumpy roads.

If you are used to her novels and expect any insight into her life: don't! If you want some juicy details about her life, they're there. But for pithy wit, wait for some of Henry James' quotes.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book in the mailroom in my building, and even though I read Ethan Frome in high school and loathed it, I was a little bit curious about Edith Wharton, whose American home "The Mount" in Lenox, MA I had toured.

At first I was put off by her privileged childhood, and not sure the book was worth the time. I persevered, and was rewarded. Her writing is so clear, obvious from her rendering of her writing process, description of many friends, and life in New York, Lenox, England and France.

I went through the book with a heavy highlighter. I learned that in her New York social circle, leisure was the expected occupation, and her family and friends never mentioned any of her writings, as if it was an embarrassment. Nor did they discuss anyone else's books. They were not readers at all, and she was quite an anomaly.

Her family was so disturbed at her bookishness that they scheduled her debut at 17. After she married, at 23, she and her husband began to travel, and Edith found her own society.

She discusses her writing process in the chapter "Secret Garden." Although I don't write fiction, I have always been curious about how different writers do it, and her description was fascinating.

There is a chapter about Henry James, a lifelong friend of hers. She has a great admiration for him and his writing, but in describing some of his interactions with others, she revealed him as a rather nasty critic who could dish it out but couldn't take it himself, though she doesn't seem to see it that way. To me, who has enjoyed several of his books, he seems a rather petty and particular old bachelor.

During WWI, she was living in France, and very involved in supporting the war effort. I would have liked to read more about that.

It surprised me that her most famous and popular novel, The Age of Innocence, was written after the end of the war, in a period when she was recuperating from the effects of living through the war. The Age of Innocence was set in an old New York of her youth, a world that no longer existed. Perhaps time and distance had distilled that world for her, perhaps looking back shielded her from thinking about the horrors of the war in France.

And now I am eager to read some of her novels.

[Nicole Ning · Rating 3 out of 5]

The unbending warning from Wharton herself in the preface hinted her determined restraint not to share personal life with us. Does it matter that we must be entertained by the anecdotes if she treated her servant angelically but called them relentlessly to bring her this and that; or her unmatched marriage which leads to ultimate divorce? We all have personal shames, guilt, privacy that are difficult to confide to even intimate friends, let alone saying revealing everything from flesh to bones to unsympathetic readers?

Wharton was restraint, that is certain; however, what she brought us closer to was the oasis-- the inner land where she sprouts after years of solitary reading and grows into a writer. By sharing the books she read we form a congenial familiarity through the same companionship as Byron, Moore, Wordsworth, Shelly, etc.
She was inspired, and we become acquainted with enchanting artists such as Berenson, Vernon Lee, etc. Her candid observations of Henry James also exhibit a vivid and humane portrait of him, although occasionally it can appear a bit overbearing on the subject

Wharton remained Victorian in her taste for lucidity but elegant statement.
That is her standard, despite the notable formal tone, her prose is stylish. Wharton has her class limit, but listen to herself and give a chance to "Ethan Frome" or short story "Summer," we ought to find the brave and emphatic silhouette of hers breaking from stifling society and became the frontier reporter near the French trench at WW1. Perhaps it was her redeemable emotional compensation for her failed personal happiness. Regardless, I held her in esteem more than a writer.

Last, to say, Wharton's sharing opinions of other artists or discussion of her writing is at modest enchanting volume, but the glance is sweetly enough.

[Robyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you had to choose one hundred people from your life to include in a memoir, whom would you choose? What would you write about each person? Such is the essence of A Backward Glance. Key details of Wharton's own life are often glossed over or excluded.

[Kristen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this and now want to visit The Mount even more than before. Even if I didn't enjoy this as a whole, the chapter on Henry James alone would've been worth the read.

[Matthew · Rating 1 out of 5]

Really found this tedious. As much as I love Wharton’s fiction, I do not want to read nearly 400 pages of how much fun her and her rich friends had yachting across Europe.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would rate this a 3.5-4. I honestly expected to enjoy it more than I did, but it frequently slowed to a crawl for me. Thankfully it would pick up again, but then back to a crawl. Although she led an interesting life of privilege, I never got a real sense of her as a person as I have with autobiographies written by other people. Her "House of Mirth" remains my favorite of her books.

[Kyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the most part I absolutely loved Wharton's autobiography. If there's one thing I appreciate in an author it's the ability to write a beautiful sentence, and Wharton is a master:

Norton was supremely gifted as an awakener, and no thoughtful mind can recall without a thrill the notes of the first voice which has called it out of its morning dream.

I can't think of any better way to express the feeling you get when you are learning from a great teacher. And her outlook on life was inspiring:

In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.

I also cannot express how much I enjoyed the stories Wharton told about her beloved friend, the Master, Henry James. I've read biographies of James, his novels, biographies of his brother William and sister Alice, and Wharton's account is the best at providing a look at a different side of James. Not a brother, not the famous novelist, but a dear friend.

Many have criticized Wharton for not going into the details of her divorce or her affair with Morton Fullerton. I do not. Can you really expect someone raised in the society described in The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence to go into such personal details in an autobigoraphy?

A few things prevented this book from achieving five star status. At times the lists of friends grew tiresome, especially the Paris chapter. I also wish more time had been given to her thoughts about her work (The Age of Innocence gets a mere two paragraphs). But overall, a very enjoyable look into the life of one of my favorite writers.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this memoir by Edith Wharton. I should probably add that if you love Edith Wharton's work, you will almost certainly also love this memoir - if you've never read Wharton, or don't care for her writing, then this is probably not the book to start with or try.

This isn't an "autobiography," but more of a collection of reminiscences, although it does proceed in a roughly chronological way. I found Wharton's descriptions of her early childhood years, when she was just discovering books, fascinating in the glimpse they give of a developing artist. Her chapters on her later life, at the Mount and then in Paris, her many friendships, and her experiences in the War are all interesting as well.

One thing I've noticed in reading both Wharton's novels and this book is that it is helpful - for me, necessary - to have a dictionary and computer nearby so I can look up the many words I don't know and the many references to people and places unfamiliar to me. Wharton was fluent in at least four languages and far more widely read than I could ever hope to be. I always feel a little smarter after reading one of her novels and I felt even more so after reading this book.

Unsurprisingly, Wharton doesn't go into much detail regarding her husband's serious mental problems and their doomed marriage; nor does she discuss at all her mid-life affair or other private matters. I'm sure there are many biographies that go into these subjects in great detail. What this book offers is a look at moments in Wharton's life which she felt were most important to set down as the most influential. In that respect I think it succeeds beautifully.

[Ronald Morton · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mostly pleasant diversion.

And I do mean overwhelmingly pleasant - not so much in the enjoyable sense, but in the oh so mannered sense of the time it is about (though maybe not the time in which it was written). So it was good, but as this is the first thing I've read of Wharton - I admit, an odd choice - I found myself not overwhelmingly drawn in by the subject matter.

Add to that my general ignorance of the literary time period in which, and of which, she wrote and the whole thing was kind of disposable to me. People come and go - a lengthy list of names I'm sure making up the who's who of the time - but almost all of them are unknown to me (though H.G. Wells makes a brief -as in one sentence - appearance).

There were exceptions to what saw as disposable. The sections about Henry James were excellent and it was wonderful to get a personal view into his character, especially from someone who was so close to him. Also - and this is where the "mostly" of mostly pleasant comes in - I particularly loved the couple chapters devoted to her experiences during World War I, and the immediate happenings afterwards as she began to see the immutable ways in which the world had changed.

So, overall, this was good. I'm sure I'd have appreciated it more had I been more familiar with her books, but I suppose I'll have to approach this backwards and read some of her novels after the fact. It was good enough to inspire me to do that, so I suppose that will have to do.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

For such a fascinating lady, this was a little slow but worth the time invested. Her friendship with Henry Jones was the highlight of this memoir. I also didn't realize she had such an affluent upbringing which was interesting. Informative and well written.

[Dana Loo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Valutazione 3,5
Una biografia di taglio mondano, poco privata e molto pubblica in cui, in un tourbillon di aneddoti divertenti, di viaggi, incontri con eminenti personalità del mondo artistico, accademico, politico, letterario la Wharton ci porta in giro per mezza Europa, a contatto con quel mondo intellettuale a lei congeniale che la formò e la educò come scrittrice, fino al duro impatto con la Prima Guerra Mondiale che, per certi versi, segna la fine di tale società. Tra le tante figure di spicco che conobbe e frequentò, due le furono particolarmente care: Henry James e Howard Sturgis, suoi grandissimi amici, con i quali visse in stretto contatto e condivise gli anni più significativi della sua vita intellettuale e non.
Una bambina e adolescente sicuramente privilegiata ma isolata, che nn sentiva un grande feeling con la sofisticata ma poco acculturata società americana perchè affascinata dalla cultura, dai libri, dalla poesia, dalla scrittura tutte cose quasi estranee a loro. Una donna essenzialmente cosmopolita quindi, inizialmente molto intimidita dagli incontri con le più grandi personalità di quel mondo letterario che venerava, e poi via via più a a suo agio man mano che la sua fama di scrittrice si consolidava.
Un ritratto essenzialmente pubblico direi che, forse, mostra poco della vera Edith, della sua interiorità, delle sue emozioni che probabilmente traspare meglio dai suoi scritti...

[Carol · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found Edith Wharton’s autobiography very limited (and in many ways) condescending. Wharton loved to share all the details of her exciting, elitist’s lifestyle but when it came to her losses, Wharton completely ignores them. According to her publisher in 1934, regarding her autobiography, “it was so unrevealing that its publishers, to Wharton's fury, tried to adjust their contract to permit severe cutting of what they called long "dull" parts.” www.http:www.penguinclassics.co.uk/nf...

Most likely in order to keep her reputation, Wharton decided not to include both her 1913 divorce with her husband Teddy, who took a mistress, embezzled money, and suffered from mental illness. And her brief, passionate love affair (at age 46) with journalist Morton Fullerton. Wharton had destroyed her photos and letters and asked Fullerton to do the same. But he did not, and many years after her death, they were published. Overall I found it a challenging read.

[Deborah Schuff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edith Wharton has written many novels, some of which (House of Mirth; Ethan Fromme; The Age of Innocence) have been made into movies. Her autobiography is as much of a depiction of the now-lost era of pre-WW1 New York and European society as it is about her own life. Although I felt put off once or twice at a touch of snobbishness due to her upbringing, I fell in love with her written words. I most especially enjoyed her stories about her friend Henry James. But it is her final two chapters ("The War"; "And After") that touched me greatly. It is here that Edith Wharton is at her most poignant.

I recommend this book to anyone who has read her novels or the novels of Henry James, or who is interested in pre-WW1 life.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a memoir, not an autobiography. Wharton glosses over much of her personal life: her loveless marriage, her strained relationship with her mother. That’s okay, this memoir is a lovely glimpse into Wharton’s mind, her insecurities, what inspired her, how she learned to tap into her creativity.

Wharton is one of my favs. However, she’s also problematic: anti-Semitic, opposed to women’s suffrage, insufferably elitist at times. A popular anecdote is that her working routine consisted of writing in bed, and dropping her finished pages on the floor to be picked up by a servant. There are passages of this book that are unintentionally funny because of how out-of-touch Wharton was. She’s not terribly likable but she is brilliant.

[Kristina Cole · Rating 3 out of 5]

wanted to love this, i really did. but i also wanted to know something more personal about edith wharton, and although i heard a lot about her friends and europe and new york, i didn't feel like it went as deep as i wanted it to. for instance, what was her marriage really like? her husband seems to be a minor figure in her life based on this account--can that really be true? so although i enjoyed the tone and the writing itself, it was very unsatisfying.

[Haleigh DeRocher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read this book twice now and I really enjoy it, but I wish she'd gone into greater detail about how she wrote her books, what inspired her to write them, what she was doing in her life during the times her greatest novels were published. Those were the most interesting parts to me, and they are few and far between

[Jeslyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This felt very much like an outsider looking in, which wasn't unexpected. Wharton discusses her intimate friendships, adventures, etc. with the classic effect of "you had to be there". No doubt the bulk of this book would have been more engrossing if the reader had indeed "been there".

That being said, Chapter IX is the jewel of the book - outstanding!