Edith Wharton

By Hermione Lee

Subjects: Women novelists, American, Biography, American authors, Biography & Autobiography, Romancières américaines, Intellectual life, Écrivains américains, American Authors, World War, 1914-1918, Biographies, Nonfiction, American Novelists, Romanciers américains, War work, Women intellectuals, Vie intellectuelle, Participation des civils, New York Times reviewed, Intellectuals, Intellectuelles, Americans, American Women authors, History, Novelists, American, American Women novelists, Guerre mondiale, 1914-1918

Description: From Hermione Lee, the internationally acclaimed, award-winning biographer of Virginia Woolf and Willa Cather, comes a superb reexamination of one of the most famous American women of letters.Delving into heretofore untapped sources, 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 into a wealthy family, Wharton left America as an adult and eventually chose to create a life in France. Her renowned novels and stories have become classics of American literature, but as Lee shows, Wharton's own life, filled with success and scandal, was as intriguing as those of her heroines. Bridging two centuries and two very different sensibilities, Wharton here comes to life in the skillful hands of one of the great literary biographers of our time.From the Trade Paperback edition.