Es una biografía intelectual, muy bien escrita. Evita contar episodios desagradables de su vida y sabemos que su matrimonio lo fue y que sufrió mucho mentalmente a causa de las infidelidades del esposo. Tiene pasajes anodinos y otros interesantísimos, sobre todo en lo que hace a la vida de las mujeres en épocas de sus abuelas y madres . "su misión era criar hijos, su recreo la costura y el bordado , ser respetadas su privilegio". Hay que completar la autobiografía con lo que no nos cuenta. Eso sí, ya sabemos que escribía maravillosamente.

Really found this tedious. As much as I love Wharton’s fiction, I do not want to read nearly 400 pages of how much fun her and her rich friends had yachting across Europe.

This is a memoir, not an autobiography. Wharton glosses over much of her personal life: her loveless marriage, her strained relationship with her mother. That’s okay, this memoir is a lovely glimpse into Wharton’s mind, her insecurities, what inspired her, how she learned to tap into her creativity.

Wharton is one of my favs. However, she’s also problematic: anti-Semitic, opposed to women’s suffrage, insufferably elitist at times. A popular anecdote is that her working routine consisted of writing in bed, and dropping her finished pages on the floor to be picked up by a servant. There are passages of this book that are unintentionally funny because of how out-of-touch Wharton was. She’s not terribly likable but she is brilliant.

Update: I bumped this up to a two, because it's useful. Still awful, but useful if you are doing any work on Wharton. Which you all should be doing.

This is awful. But hilarious. But awful. And wildly inaccurate, but just mainly awful. Though it is interesting, so I gave it a one.

I didn’t expect to find this book boring and dull, but unfortunately it was. It was a struggle to finish. There is very little biographical information included; it is mostly name dropping and bare bones descriptions of her travels. There are more anecdotes about her friends than details about herself. Edith didn’t have as unconventional a life as I thought she did. She did travel a lot but that was not all that unusual at the time for a woman of her class and means. She mostly went back and forth between America, France, and England and socialized with her own set. She was very well read, but it seems like she travelled just to see new scenery and not to experience the local life and color.

A Backward Glance is a tedious read. Edith Wharton's memoir offers little to her oeuvre except to make the case that she's every bit as vapid and petty as one of the ancillary characters in her wonderful novels of manners. What we have here are long lists of the "exciting" people whom Edith knew, all of them artists, or aristocracy, many of them invalids, and most completely unknown to this reader. Though, of course, a 21st century reader was never her primary audience, I still can't help but wonder who in her clique was even alive at the time of the book's publication to still get a chuckle out of the incessant name dropping, and insufferable bon mots, which are rolled out at such a pace it's impossible to find any narrative traction or build any sort of relationship with anyone.

Worse, Wharton has absolutely no sense of self-reflection with regard to her privilege and there are several interactions and asides that are downright cringe-worthy. The only thing I ended up taking away from Edith's visit with author George Meredith was Edith's utter alarm that a nurse, whom Meredith probably spent most of his time with and depended on for a number of health reasons, had the audacity to take her lunch in the same room as Wharton, Meredith and Henry James. I mean, the house had a bunch of empty rooms where she could have eaten, right everyone?

The memoir picks up considerably when Wharton gives a whole chapter over to her life-long friend, Henry James. James is the only "character" in this 400 page volume who comes across remotely three-dimensional, and Wharton's attention to detail regarding the peculiarities of the author's character make the prose pop in a way that recalls her best fiction.

But this moment, and the few others like it, are fleeting. We're suddenly in another drawing room with thirty people whose names I cannot recall, or giving a backhanded compliment to one of her "best friends" who is just awful at one thing or another. That Edith Wharton is a great fiction writer, I won't deny, but the veil on her private life is one I wish had stayed dropped. "Pay no attention to the man behind the mirror," from The Wizard of Oz comes to mind.

As does "if I only had a heart."

[1934] Notes to self…Fan of her work so enjoyed getting to know her a little more through this autobiography. Reminds me of the Stefan Zweig memoir that I just read. Both successful writers of some renown, both describing where they were when they heard that Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated, and both described their friends and others they encountered with such kindness and warm respect, I feel certain that they would have been fast friends had their time and place had ever intersected. Seems like a kind and grounded person, and what an amazing life she led, splitting her time between the U.S. and Europe. Realize how much I love this late nineteenth, early twentieth century time period. Loved seeing how much of her novels came from the society she knew. Loved the in-depth coverage of her friendship with Henry James, but probably a little more detail than I needed on many of her other friendships with people I wasn’t familiar with.

I was so excited to read this book because I've been finding myself lately so intrigued by Wharton's novels and in the one-pager summary of her life that appear at the back of her books, there was always a hint of spunk that I was determined to uncover.

In this autobiography, Wharton documents her travels across Europe, her friendships and her journey through becoming a writer. That image of her and Henry James riding a motor car traversing through the English countryside with James fumbling through his request for directions is my favorite Henry James memory of her.

I was filled with frustration to know that my favorite author had planned to share her journeys through Greece, a country that I fell truly and deeply in love with, never happened. I would have to make-do with the short snippet that she shared here of her sailing through the Cyclades, down south to the Dodecanese and Crete of what would've been a travel book titled, "The Sapphire Way".

Of her Greek journey she says, "Only twice in my life have I been able to put all practical cares out of my mind for months, and each time it has been on a voyage in the Aegean."

Though I have thoroughly enjoyed her novels I found this book boring (except for the last two chapters):endless name dropping of mostly forgotten brillant or beautiful people and places.

She does a lot of thanking the people in her life in this book, so there isn't much biographical material here, in the strict sense. But I enjoyed it, every once in a while a gem comes out and you grab your phone to look something up that she mentions.

Such beautiful writing... Wharton chooses, as she has the right, to be selective about her sharing. One comes away, not with a complete timeline of places and people, but with a sense of knowing the kind of person Edith Wharton was, how she thought and felt. Of course, she crafts this picture for the reader through her exquisite prose.

Strictly for Wharton aficionados. Her memoir has no perspective. It's most just recounting her social life. Lots about Henry James, but the rest are people I mostly never heard of and still don't care about. Love her fiction, but this falls flat.