Description: These carefully chosen selections from Edith Wharton's travel writing convey the writer's control of her craft. Wharton disliked the generality of guidebooks and focused instead on the "parentheses of travel"--the undiscovered hidden corners of Europe, Morocco, and the Mediterranean. Included is an excerpt from Wharton's unpublished memoir, The Cruise of Vanadis, as well as front line depictions of Lorraine and the Vosges during World War I. Photos.
Brief description: Edith Wharton (1862-1937) was one of America's greatest writers. The author of more than forty books, including The Age of Innocence, Wharton was the first woman awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, an honorary Doctorate of Letters from Yale University, and full membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Wharton was the principal designer of her 1902 country home The Mount in Lenox, Mass. The Mount's elegant house and gardens reflect the neoclassical design principles that she espoused in her works The Decoration of Houses and Italian Villas and Their Gardens.