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Written by 
- Format: Hardcover, 880 pages
- Publisher: Knopf
- On Sale: April 10, 2007
- Price: $35.00
- ISBN: 978-0-375-40004-9 (0-375-40004-4)
about this book
Delving into heretofore untapped sources, Hermione Lee does away with the image of the snobbish bluestocking and gives us a new Edith Wharton—tough, startlingly modern, as brilliant and complex as her fiction.
Born in 1862, Wharton escaped the suffocating fate of the well-born female, traveled adventurously in Europe and eventually settled in France. After tentative beginnings, she developed a forceful literary professionalism and thrived in a luminous society that included Bernard Berenson, Aldous Huxley and most famously Henry James, who here emerges more as peer than as master. Wharton’s life was fed by nonliterary enthusiasms as well: her fabled houses and gardens, her heroic relief efforts during the Great War, the culture of the Old World, which she never tired of absorbing. Yet intimacy eluded her: unhappily married and childless, her one brush with passion came and went in midlife, an affair vividly, intimately recounted here.
With profound empathy and insight, Lee brilliantly interweaves Wharton’s life with the evolution of her writing, the full scope of which shows her far to be more daring than her stereotype as lapidarian chronicler of the Gilded Age. In its revelation of both the woman and the writer, Edith Wharton is a landmark biography.
“Lively . . . Insightful . . . Thorough and intelligent . . .This meticulous, generous biography is likely to suffice for a long time . . . One can at last grasp the full range of Wharton’s writing and the full power of her energy.”
—Diane Johnson, Washington Post Book World
“A splendid biography, extremely rich in social and historical detail, a telling picture of the many years Wharton’s life spanned . . . Biography is usually the revenge of little people on big people . . .but Lee is subtle and big-hearted enough to understand her subject . . . Lee never reduces Wharton’s books to veiled autobiography, just as she is never reluctant to interpret them in the light of Wharton’s life . . . A sophisticated, finely written portrait . . . Edith Wharton would have been horrified bye the ‘indiscretions’ in this biography, but it is the balanced, richly detailed, and researched portrait she deserves.”
—Edmund White, The New York Review of Books
“A rich tapestry. There is so much here . . . Edith Wharton shimmers with details about a vanished world, and Lee . . . brings it to vivid life.”
—Jacqueline Blais, USA Today
“A remarkable feat . . . Nobody has done Edith Wharton such careful justice as Lee.”
—Claire Messud, New York Times Book Review
“Magnificent . . . Unsurpassable in scope and surely in sensitivity . . . Filled to bursting with the friends, travels, projects and writings that engaged Wharton’s attention and energies.”
—Linda Simon, Newsday
“Groundbreaking . . . A sophisticated, persuasive, powerfully intelligent masterwork.”
—Lisa Shea, Elle
“Enables readers to feel they have known Mrs. W. all their lives.”
—Barbara Amiel, Wall Street Journal
“Stunning . . . Rich . . . Wonderfully humanizing.”
—Megan O’Grady, Vogue
“Rich . . . Fine . . . Much more than a literary study.”
—Bruce Allen, The Washington Times
“Elegant . . . not only the best book on its subject, but one of the finest literary biographies to appear in recent years.”
—Greg Johnson, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“A fascinating portrait of a brilliant writer.”
—The Economist
“Lee’s subtle and painstaking ability to illuminate the work with the life, and to make the life itself so interesting makes this a superb biography.” —Colm Tóibín, Irish Times
“Monumentally conceived and impressively executed . . . comprehensive and insightful. . . . Lee is out to understand Wharton, not to vilify or sanctify her. . . . Neither Wharton nor the reader should have cause for complaint.” —Elaine Showalter, The Guardian
“Adding impressive depth and nuance to the received portrait of Wharton, Lee’s biography excels in its discussion of her writing. There are superbly acute appreciations of works such as The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence.”
—Peter Kemp, The Sunday Times
“Moving . . . monumental and exhaustive.” —Hilary Spurling, The Observer
“Hermione Lee has written a fascinating portrait of a brilliant writer.” —The Economist
“Gracious and judicious. . . . In its contagious love of Wharton’s tremendous oeuvre, Lee’s portrait blossoms into a thing of beauty in its own right.” —Hepzhibah Anderson, Vogue
“Excellent . . . deals superbly with the many strands of Wharton’s life. . . . A magnificent and subtle biography of a magnificent and subtle writer.” —Caroline Moore, Sunday Telegraph
“Edith Wharton . . . could scarcely have failed to be impressed by its artistic sympathy, its sonorous depths, and its soaring conception. This is a glorious biography.” —Mark Bostridge, The Independent on Sunday
“Lee reconstructs Wharton’s physical world (notably her houses), her intellectual cultural world, and her social world(s) in fine detail. It is done brilliantly. Anyone embarking on a reading of Wharton will deny themselves full appreciation if they do not consult Lee, whose biography is now the necessary accompaniment.” —John Sutherland, Financial Times
“Brilliant.” —Jennifer Selway, Daily Express
“Every page is alive with colour. . . . It is Wharton’s writings that ultimately take centre stage, and Lee’s extended critiques are both meticulous and accessible.” —Stephanie Cross, Daily Mail
“Lee’s portraiture at its best seems Proustian. Time passes, but we glide forward without seeming to.” —Michael Gorra, Times Literary Supplement
“Admirable.” —Gillian Tindall, Literary Review
“Epic and definitive.” —Jane Shilling, The Times
“Painstaking and elegant. . . . Her method is itself very Whartonian. . . . One of this book’s great pleasures is Lee’s discussion of Wharton’s work.” —Kasia Boddy, The Daily Telegraph
“Likely to replace R.W. B. Lewis’ groundbreaking Edith Wharton as the definitive biographical treatment, because of new sources (as well as the author's sensitive interpretation of these sources), Lee’s tremendous biography of one of the most important American writers rises to landmark status.” —Booklist
“Lee exhibits an intuitive empathy with her subject (never glossing over her less admirable characteristics) and thus animates Wharton as a fully dimensional figure of complex and contradictory values and impulses—a woman of fierce ambition and lingering self-doubt, of generous friendships and ignoble snobbery and prejudices, with a zest for travel and adventure despite frequent, debilitating ill health. Lee challenges several traditional stereotypes about Wharton, including her literary relationship with Henry James—more peer than acolyte, Lee shows—and with Walter Berry and Bernard Berenson. In no other biography is there a more perceptive analysis of how Wharton's life was reflected in her work. Her nightmarish marriage and midlife passionate affair with Morton Fullerton, the straitjacket social code that she violated by seeking a divorce were transmogrified in the novels, stories and poetry (some of it erotic). Lee’s portrait of Wharton as a strong-willed woman determined to surmount the background she drew on for inspiration, a woman obsessed with ‘double lives, repression, sexual hypocrisy, hidden longings,’ is a major achievement.” —Publishers Weekly
“An exemplary biography of a not-always-exemplary subject. Sure to be the standard work on Wharton for years to come.” —Kirkus Reviews
