Wharton's last novel, left unfinished when she died at 75 in France. The real-life "buccaneers," who were also called Dollar Princesses or Dollar Duchesses, were American heiresses who married into various aristocratic families of Europe, such as Winston Churchill's mother and the great-grandmother of Diana, Princess of Wales. This novel seemed lighter, more accessible, and less wrenching than her best work, but still enjoyable, featuring some genuine Whartonesque moments. There's also a bunch of fun anti-American cavilling by the beset British. The newly manufactured ending didn't add much to the story and I'd rather have seen Wharton's own "detailed outline" or "Synopsis." Perhaps it's better for each reader to be free to imagine their own preferred ending. [3★]

Dante Gabriel Rossetti jump scare

im so curious what would have happened if Edith Wharton lived long enough to edit/deliberate on/finish this book..it could have been one of her best
it's such a shame nan st George was never afforded the opportunity to be fully formed because dare I say she had the potential to be up in the ranks of an Isabel archer/Elizabeth Bennet, see the following:

"It's rather lonely sometimes, when the only things that seem real are one's dreams."

"The angry child had been replaced by a sad but self-controlled woman."

"Poor Nan St. George--so tongue-tied and bewildered by the surge of her feelings; why had no one taught her the words for them?"

Поради странен бъг в Amazon UK някак си съм купила незавършената оригинална работа на Уортън, а не новата версия, която е дописана от друг автор. Въпреки, че книгата не е довършена, в края има бележките на Уортън, в които е описана общо цялата история и добиваш идея какъв ще е краят за главната ни героиня.

Припомних си защо избягвам книгите на Уортън. Харесвам как пише и историите са красиви, но толкова депресиращи и убиващи всякаква светлина, че не мога да издържа повече от една на няколко години. Това реално ми е втората нейна книга и може би не беше добра идея да е последната ѝ незавършена творба, ама карай.

Хареса ми историята за петте американски момичета, които превземат английското общество, но в последните сто страници Нан (Анабел) почна много, ама много да ме дразни като героиня и откроено да ми е антипатична. Още от самото начало не харесвах Кончита, но Нан ми беше що-годе симпатична. Уви, накрая просто ми идваше да я зашлевя, което говори много добре за писателските умения на Уортън, ама не и за моята търпимост.

Та, както винаги, депресираме ме книгата и някак си се радвам, че получих само бегла идея какъв е краят. Не знам защо хората твърдят, че това е щастлив край. За мен е типично тъжен, напълно в стила на Уортън. Ако някога ме хване желанието да видя какъв край са измислили за петте момичета, винаги мога да изгледам екранизацията на Apple TV, но не вярвам да си го причиня. :)

so NO ONE was going to tell me that there is going to be a limited series adaptation of my queen edith wharton's the buccaneers??!

I didn’t listen to the version with a “completed” ending - so I only got as far as Wharton did, with only her plot outline to guide us for where we might go next. I like to think that if Wharton had completed the book, she would have gone back and revised her draft to make it tighter and less pedestrian. But as it is, we get a lot of characters but a shortage of the searing insight into human foibles (especially those touching on class, marriage and propriety) and lapidary writing that characterizes Wharton’s finished novels. None of the humor and sarcasm of custom of the country, none of the heart break of House of mirth. As I said, I’d like to believe she would’ve fixed all that in revisions.

As it is, I’d still rather listen to this than someone else’s adaptation. But not entirely satisfying for even a passionate Wharton fan.

The synopsis for this 1938 edition for The Buccaneers (appearing above) is completely wrong! Who wrote that?! No swashbuckling pirates, here! Edith Wharton's "novel" was published as a lightly edited, incomplete manuscript in the year following her death. It was sure to have been her masterpiece!
The "Buccaneers" are 5 nouveau riche American girls who, steered by an English-Italian (cousin to artist/poet D.G. Rosetti) governess, "invade" the Bristish peerage in the 'seventies (1870's).
While later editions append with an ending written by a Wharton scholar, I am charmed that my local libray is still circulating this original 1938 edition! There is no ending; it's a cliffhanger prematurely left off amidst a failing marriage and budding romance. So why 5 stars??
The writing is superb. The British landscape is beautifully elaborated, in watercolor tones. The subject is fascinating: courtships spanning the improbable social/cultural divide between American upstarts and British aristocrats. And then there's the novelty of reading an unfinished work. The editor insists that Ms. Wharton was not finished developing several of her characters. The contrast between her well-developed characters and the more-transparent ones helps a modern reader appreciate qualities of "classic" literature. I universally recommend this forgotten masterpiece. I'm still deciding if I'll read the "finished" edition, as this one was surprisingly satisfying even in it's incompletion.

Mainwaring isn’t a particularly convincing mimic, and overall the story feels like something of an apologia for the tribulations of Lily Bart, but the Wharton sections are crisply scathing. I enjoyed it but non-completists don’t need to bother.

I couldn’t help but shake my head at the young debutantes that this novel was centered around and wonder at their choices.

Half way through and I can't listen to this story any longer. It is so, so boring.

The Buccaneers is Edith Wharton’s last and uncompleted novel. She had written approximately 89,000 words before her death and the novel was printed in its incomplete form by her publisher. In 1993 Marion Mainwaring, a noted Wharton scholar, completed the story, in line with notes that Wharton had left behind. She did a good job, since there is no obvious break in the voice between the beginning of the book and the end, but it seems clear to me that no one, even a great scholar, could ever know exactly how Wharton would have ended her work. If someone was going to guess, I think Mainwaring was a good choice, but I can’t help wishing Wharton could have done it herself and that it were as pure a Wharton as The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth.

Despite this, The Buccaneers is a masterful work of fiction, set in Wharton’s high-society world, and full of the angst and manipulation that makes me happy for just a moment not to have been among the fabulously wealthy, well-married women of the time. Love and marriage do not go together like a horse and carriage in Wharton’s world. Marriage is mostly an institution of convenience and profit, you get a name and I get money, and woe to the romantically inclined girl who stumbles into this world of harsh reality unawares.

It is the reality behind the mask in a Wharton that makes it so worthwhile to read her. She strips the conventions to the bone and calls them by name. She exposes what people are willing to do and become in an effort to climb a social ladder, where someone else is always contriving to knock them off or at least kick them down a rung. And, she is superbly adept at lending light to the less affluent who have to circle in this world and navigate its waters. One of her finest characters in The Buccaneers is Miss Laura Testvalley, a governess who knows her place and sees the world without any rose-colored glasses, but whose caring heart cannot resist loving and aiding her charge, Annabel St. George (Nan).

There is always the beauty of Wharton’s descriptive writing that would, alone, make me wish to read this book: It was dark when Folyat House loomed high and stately in Portman Square, light shining from its long rows of windows and torches flaming at the grand portal. Footmen jumped down from the barouche which had met the travelers at Paddington, opened the escutcheoned doors, and helped them out. Other footmen led them up steps and into an oval colonnaded lobby. The Glenloe girls’ eyes widened as the groom-of-the-chambers, attended by yet other footmen, conducted them into a great rectangular hall through an arch at the opposite end.” When I read that,I feel I am one of the Glenloe girls and can see the glamour of the hall and the bustle of the footmen providing their services to the titled and privileged in a stoic and efficient manner.

I loved seeing the five girls (who are the buccaneers) transform from innocent pawns in the game to active players. In the beginning, they are primarily spurred on by ambitious mothers, while they are, themselves, just happy to have a good time and attract the attention of the men. By the end, they are among the ones pulling the strings and conniving for power, and the wheat is separated from the chaff, as they say.

They change, even toward one another. “Virginia, who had seemed to Annabel so secure, so aloof, so disdainful of everything but her own pleasures, but who, as Lady Seadown, was enslaved to that dull half-sleeping Seadown, absorbed in questions of rank and precedence, and in awe--actually in awe--of her father-in-law’s stupid arrogance…”

Finally, they are seen, even by their husbands as pirates, conquerors, rulers who come to rule by stealth:
”What a gang of buccaneers you are!” he breathed to his wife.
t“Buccaneers,” Lizzy reminded him gently, “were not notorious for paying fortunes for what they took.”

Several of these girls do pay heavily for what they take, and they pay more than money. Those who fail to toe society’s line pay a price and lose a lot, but those who adhere to it pay almost as much, if not more. Wharton does not traffic in happily ever after in her novels--people die, they are ruined, they are impoverished. I personally see the hand of Mainwaring in this novel most heavily in the lightness of the penalties exacted. I believe Wharton would have visited a harsher punishment on her characters in the end. She was unflinching when portraying the viciousness of society. She had seen it in her lifetime. She knew the costs. You need only think of Lily Bart to know that she did. I can’t help wondering, had fate allowed Wharton to finish this novel, if my dear Nan and Laura Testvalley would have been spared.

I tried (not actually) to finish this by the end of 2023. Some of it is my fault and lack of discipline. But some of it is the book's fault.

I read this in an extreme out of order position in my current Edith Wharton project. I should have been reading her second novel, but skipped ahead to this posthumously published unfinished manuscript because I want to watch a television show inspired by it. It's fine to do that.

It starts off an absolute banger. At 2/3 of the way through...lords...that's when the second writer appears and things really go off the rails. I barely skimmed the last 15 pages because it was mostly exposition and snogging. Not very Wharton-like.

I'm going to need a serious palette cleanser now. Not an auspicious start to the new literary year, but I'm not worried. The odds favor things going up hill from here.