Edith Wharton's Lenox

Cornelia Brooke Gilder

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781467135177
• eBook ISBN: 9781625857880
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Biographies
• Index: Literature

An insider's history of how famed novelist Wharton stirred up scandal in the western Massachusetts town.
In 1900, Edith Wharton burst into the settled summer colony of Lenox. An aspiring novelist in her thirties, she was already a ferocious aesthete and intellect. She and her husband, Teddy, planned a defiantly classical villa, and she became a bestselling author with The House of Mirth in 1905. As a hostess, designer, gardener and writer, Wharton set high standards that delighted many, including Ambassador Joseph Choate and sculptor Daniel Chester French. But her perceptive and sometimes indiscreet pen also alienated potent figures like Emily Vanderbilt Sloane and Georgiana Welles Sargent. Author Cornelia Brooke Gilder gives an insider's glimpse of the community's reaction to this disruptive star during her tumultuous Lenox decade.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. French Periodicals and Fine Points of Punctuation and Perennials
• 2. The Whartons Before Edith
• 3. The Whartons and Edith Newbold Jones
• 4. Angel at the Grave and Innovator in the Garden: Miss Georgiana Sargent
• 5. Showing Off The Mount
• 6. The Whartons, the Vanderbilts and the Sloanes
• 7. Yuki Morgan
• 8. The Lenox Sporting Life: Pages from the Ambassador’s Album and Diary
• 9. Hot House Nectarines from Baby Giraud
• 10. Mrs. Chapin’s View
• 11. “Two Months’ Agony”: Ethel Cram
• 12. Picnics with Edith Wharton
• 13. The Ingleside Story
• 14. Codman’s “Blue Room” in Lenox: Miss Kneeland
• 15. The Court House Hill Coasting Accident, Kate Spencer and Ethan Frome
• 16. The Perils of the Pétrolette or the Lenox “Motor Wars”
• 17. First Motor-Flights into the Country: The Nortons at Ashfield
• 18. A Sympathetic Editor: Richard Watson Gilder in Tyringham
• 19. The Folsom Library at Sunnyridge
• 20. Pity for Poor “Inarticulate” Animals: The Whartons and the Sturgises
• 21. Grace Kuhn: The “Gallant” Invalid on the Hill
• 22. Lily Bart’s Final Prescription: Dr. Kinnicutt
• 23. Nannie Wharton: The Village Improver
• 24. Teddy’s Last Years
• Appendix A: New Public Buildings in Edith Wharton’s Decade in Lenox
• Appendix B: The Local Architectural Influence of The Mount
• Appendix C: Cast of Lenox Cottages and Cottagers in Edith Wharton’s Day
• Chronology: Edith Wharton’s Lenox Years
• Notes
• Bibliography
• About the Author