Edith Wharton in France

(Hardback)

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From French scholar and author Claudine Lesage, comes Edith Wharton in France, an examination of Whartons years (1907-1937) in France. Lesage, with her innate knowledge of French culture, uses previously unknown or untranslated sources to provide a unique look into French society and Whartons place within it.

Edith Wharton in France chronicles Edith Whartons dogged efforts to penetrate the Byzantine levels of French high society, her love for the French and Italian countryside, and her consuming passion for the Mediterranean garden. While Lesage is initially skeptical of Whartons ability to become French, this work ultimately portrays a woman of indomitable spirit who ultimately succeeds in fashioning a French home of her own making in her beloved adopted country.

Lesages work illuminates the intertwined characters and important relationships of Whartons life in France, many of them overlooked or minimized in earlier biographies. Prominently featured in the account are the French novelist Paul Bourget and his wife Minnie, whose meticulous diary entries over a 35-year period provide a fresh look at Whartons active social life both in Paris and on the French Riviera.

A still more intimate look into Whartons French circle is provided by her extensive correspondence with the Frenchman Lon Blugou, a widely travelled mining engineer, writer and well-known figure in Parisian high society. Spanning more than 25 years, the letters portray a mutual intellectual kinship and devoted friendship. Other newly discovered highlights include letters presented as evidence in Whartons French divorce proceedings, a mysterious autobiographical essay written by Whartons lover, American journalist Morton Fullerton, and numerous photographs never before published.

The author of multiple works of translation, as well original French texts on Wharton and Conrad, Lesage had access to unexamined and untranslated French sources. She presents Whartons life from the perspective of a native French woman, capturing a unique view of Wharton trying to navigate through the ancient layers of French society and master its often maddeningly obscure rules, all the while commenting on the horrors of World War I and the cataclysmic changes in the arts and culture of Paris.

Reviews

In this smooth English translation, Claudine Lesages Edith Wharton in France provides essential reading for lovers of Whartons novels. Drawing on new letters for its intimate rendering of Whartons circle, Lesage has constructed a kind of epistolary biography that reveals an extraordinary woman seeking and finding independence in an elite social world both familiar and strange. -Megan Marshall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Margaret Fuller: A New American Life This view of Edith Wharton, from a new, French, perspective, not only fleshed out, but in some instances completely upended, what I already knew of the author from my research. There are sparkling new insights here. -Connie Woolridge, author of The Brave Escape of Edith Wharton Claudine Lesage's inspired sleuthing has produced thrilling new material no Wharton scholar can afford to miss. Edith Wharton in France will also intrigue a wider readership with its crucial additions to known facts about Wharton's overseas friendships and its provocative argument that gardening was as important as writing to the great novelist during her last years. -Diane Jacobs, New York Times notable book author of Dear Abigail: The Intimate Lives and Revolutionary Ideas of Abigail Adams and her Two Remarkable Sisters

Author Bio

The French author Claudine Lesage, ne Holuigue, was born in 1943. She obtained a Ph.D. in English Literature at Amiens in 1987, specializing in the works of Joseph Conrad. Lesage published several books about Conrad: La maison de Thrse (1992), Joseph Conrad et le Continent (2003), and translations of his works: Le Forban (2005), Du got des voyages (2007), and Coeur des Tnbres (2009). In 1989, while researching Conrad at the library of the Cte dAzur town of Hyres, Lesage discovered an unsigned manuscript that appeared to be an early work of Edith Wharton. After studying the manuscript, Lesage determined it was an unpublished account of Whartons 1888 Mediterranean cruise aboard the private yacht, The Vanadis. After publishing the journal as The Cruise of the Vanadis, Lesage probed further into Whartons work and her life, concentrating on the American writers French years. Lesage translated several Wharton short stories; edited Lettres a l'ami Francais (2001); and authored Edith Wharton en France (2011). Dr. Lesage died in 2013 before she could publish her final manuscript, a work on Whartons life in France intended for an American audience.