Edith Wharton was one of the best writers of the 20th century. The excellence of her entire body of work ranks her right up there with the best of her era. In this volume she takes a look back at her own life; the novels, her marriage, her friends, and her life as an American living in Paris. Her good friend, Henry James, wrote the introduction, and it's a must read for anyone who is a fan of Wharton's novels.

Edith Wharton è senza dubbio tra le mie scrittrici preferite. L'idea di leggere la sua autobiografia mi emozionava, eppure la lettura non mi ha soddisfatto al 100%.
Il fulcro del libro infatti non sembra essere tanto la Whathon e la sua vita, ma le persone che ha incontrato e i ricevimenti a cui ha assistito: sicuramente una lettura interessante (meraviglioso il capitolo su Henry James) che traccia un quadro di una società in declino, tuttavia non sono riuscita veramente a penetrare nell'animo della scrittrice.
Ogni tanto la Whathon infila qualche riflessione più 'ardita' sul mondo che la circonda, eppure sembra sempre restare in superficie...Edith sembra voler sfuggire a sé stessa.
Lo stile è sempre ironico, dettagliato e chiaro...ma dalla mia cara Edith mi aspettavo molto di più.

I've read this book twice now and I really enjoy it, but I wish she'd gone into greater detail about how she wrote her books, what inspired her to write them, what she was doing in her life during the times her greatest novels were published. Those were the most interesting parts to me, and they are few and far between

I really liked this book in the beginning. However, as the book went on it started dragging. Then I got bored. I can't remember the last time it took me a month to read a book this short. I just couldn't stay in it.

It's supposedly an autobiography, but I'm not sure I by it. If it is it may be one of the most self-indulgent autobiographies ever. There is more than enough of the book dedicated to talking about her wealth in a very passive aggressive way. She didn't live in a small NY house despite what she wants the reader to believe. A house that can hold multiple servants isn't small.

Maybe read it if you need some light reading, but it is far less well written than any of her novels.

I quite liked this book and had some serious disagreements with the intro by Louis Auchincloss - it comes off as far more dated than Edith's writing does. Scolding her for not putting in more about James or her "writing process." I think she talks quite a bit and very well about her writing, how she started, how she continued, why she wrote what she wrote. He also wonders that she didn't talk about her husband but focused instead on her relationship with Sturgis - it's like come on Auchincloss, really? Her husband did not share any of her interests or drives, the marriage was based on their shared love of creature comforts, and it did eventually end in divorce. Her real emotional life was in her friendship with other writers, most of them men - so go sit down somewhere and feel sorry for her husband there, not it the intro to her autobiography.

Brilliant writing for anyone who wants to write memoir.

Found this book by accident at a used book store. It reads slowly, but she's fun to listen to, a Victorian diction, true 'old-school' manner. It was like visiting with an old aunt. As a feminist, it reminded me that it was not so long ago that women were not encouraged to have a career of any sort, and that many of us were functionally illiterate, even the wealthy.

I am infatuated with the period between the 1860’s and 1920’s. The Civil War, industrial Revolution, and the arts all exploded, and it’s interesting to see that world through the eyes of the people who lived it. Teddy Roosevelt and Edith Wharton are two of my favorite personalities from that era. Both are NYC jewels, not because they were representative of old NYC culture, on the contrary, they bucked social norms and expectations understanding how limiting and, in many cases ridiculous, those expectations were.

Despite no formal schooling besides tutors, Edith Wharton had a great mind and natural curiosity that rivaled any of the prominent men of her time. As a child she traveled extensively through Europe with her family and was fluid in German, French and Italian. She devoured the books in her father’s library in NYC learning history and geography in addition to the masters. She was a courageous traveler and one of the earliest to own a motorcar. Her writings were not limited to novels but books on gardening, architecture and European culture.

However, what I found most interesting was which artists she admired: Isadora Duncan’s style was smooth and flowing unlike anything Wharton had ever seen before. She was sure that it was Duncan’s inspiration that changed the Russian ballet. After reading Proust’s first novel, she knew that he would be a master. Her explanations of French salons and the great minds she was exposed to at those gatherings and how they worked is fascinating. (I would love to host one today.). Her friendships meant the world to her, especially Henry James and Walter Berry.

Edith Wharton was a trailblazer in her time even though there is no mention of her involvement in the suffrage movement. She showed the world that a woman could be every bit as brilliant, curious and courageous as a man no doubt influencing the women who followed who came after her.

emojiiiiii!!!!!

'A Backward Glance' is an amazing read. While Edith Wharton's book is not 'tell it all,' it does not disappoint. After all how much can one tell about oneself! She is selective about what she reveals.

There is one whole chapter on Henry James which I have adored. Strangely enough. This particular chapter gives a wonderful glimpse of James, the person. There are certain things mentioned about him that I found endearing. I hoped that she would talk about his books; however, she refrains from doing so. In the succeeding chapter, 'The Secret Garden' she writes about her own writing and how she struggled with it. I loved reading it. This might be of some value for the budding writers.

Since I have not read any of her fiction, in her non-fiction she comes across as someone who is elitist and moves only in select circles. This fact amuses me. Two chapters are exclusively written about her time spent in London and Paris. She prefers Paris of the times far more than London. Only because private gatherings in Paris means meeting the same elite over and over again. These small elitist communities fortify themselves against the rest. In London, she always felt as if she were at a train-station looking at strangers. Each evening has unknown people coming in and so forth.

What is unique about the book is her language. Athough the world described in it is more than hundred years old, the way it is done feels contemporary. In short, the language is fresh. Edith Wharton, being such an elitist, might prefer the word 'exquisite' for her language than the ordinary-sounding word 'fresh.'

More interesting than I might have expected, but only just. Her society friends didn't talk about her writing, as it was looked down upon as a career. Friends with Henry James and Teddy Roosevelt, she found herself marooned in Paris in 1914, and spent the next four years working with refugees, and the last twenty years of her life in France. New York figured much more prominently in her work than it did in her life.

The word “thwarted” comes to mind. There’s something thwarted about Edith’s book, or life, or both. Let me open it at random:

“Having married early, and been soon left a widower, he had lived for many years in Paris; but his children were growing up, the time had come for his sons to enter Harvard, and the year of my marriage he returned to New York, where he had built himself a charming house. Besides being an ardent bibliophile he was a discriminating collector of works of art, especially of the eighteenth century, and his house was the first in New York in which an educated taste had replaced stuffy upholstery and rubbishy ‘ornaments’ with objects of real beauty in a simply designed setting.”

You see what I mean? In case you’re dying to know, she’s writing about a person named Egerton Winthrop.

Part II

Now I realize why the word "thwarted" came to mind: it's in her name:

Edi thWhart on