A recent Wall Street Journal article takes on a key question raised in Edith Wharton’s 1920 Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Age of Innocence. She writes it with one foot planted in the sureties of the Edwardian garden party that preceded World War I and the other perched precariously on the shifting ground of the… [Read More]
Gilded Age Baby Rattle of Edith Wharton Being Sold for $16,500
November 4, 2015 By
An Edith Wharton item has created a huge stir. Unfortunately, it’s not a newly discovered manuscript or a stash of hidden letters that has captured the world’s attention but the sale of Wharton’s very own baby rattle….for $16,500! Before you get too excited, you should know that the rattle, made of coral and sterling silver,… [Read More]
Edith Wharton Safe at Home – The Mount in Lenox, Massachusetts is a Place Worth Visiting!
October 20, 2015 By
When I visit the home of a historical figure, the thing I’m looking for is sense of that long ago human being. I want to feel the very presence of the person, imagine him moving through the rooms, see her puttering in the garden or taking a book off the shelf to read. Edith Wharton… [Read More]
Work in Progress #21: How My Emily Post Biography Is a Bit Like… Edith Wharton: The Sequel!
September 15, 2015 By
Sequels are very popular these days, which is not good news for historical biographers. Our subjects tend to die at the end of the story. When I set out to do a biography of Emily Post three years ago, I certainly wasn’t thinking of the book as a sequel to Edith Wharton. No one was… [Read More]
The Haunting Quality of Edith Wharton
August 25, 2015 By
In her insightful article “Why Edith Wharton Haunts Us Still,” Anne Kingston speculates about why so many novelists these days are being compared to Edith Wharton. As Kingston observes, we’ve never stopped being obsessed by the very wealthy or by people trying to claw their way up the social ladder and Wharton is the master… [Read More]
Work in Progress #18: The Moving Light at the End of the Tunnel
July 6, 2015 By
I am three quarters of the way through my Emily Post biography…maybe (dare I hope it???) even further. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Except for the fact that writing a longer piece always goes slower and slower the further I proceed because I realize with every sentence I write… [Read More]
Work in Progress #17: A Quote File
June 1, 2015 By
I keep a quote file on my desktop where I can record interesting tidbits from the things I read. I’ve developed a list of categories to file them under so that I can access them when a particular subject comes up in a piece I might be working on: “aging,” “being/becoming,” “freedom,” “history-writing,” “self,” “superficiality,”… [Read More]
Book Launch! – Journey From An Idea To Publication
May 26, 2015 By
A while back, I traveled to the Blue Marble Bookstore in Fort Thomas, Kentucky, for the book launch of Like a River by Kathy Cannon Wiechman. Book launches are exciting affairs. Of course, they’re really exciting if it’s your own book that’s being launched. But the journey from idea to publication is such a long… [Read More]
The Writing Mind of Edith Wharton
February 18, 2015 By
The Atlantic magazine neatly bookended Edith Wharton’s writing life. It was in the pages of that prestigious journal that, in 1880, her first poems appeared in print. In 1933, four years before her death, that same journal published an article entitled “Confession of a Novelist” in which Wharton looked back over her prolific writing career… [Read More]
Bookends – Some Suggested Christmas Reading
December 1, 2014 By
I like “bookend” plots that start in one place and then circle back to the beginning of things. I like January and December because they bookend the year. And I like bookends – the real thing – because they’re useful when you have as many books as I do. Here are some books you might… [Read More]