Edith Wharton tells you more about Henry James than about herself - literally the point of a memoir. She obviously comes from the time and place where hard emotions were not discussed - not her husband's mental illness, her divorce, or her affairs. Skip it and read a bio of her fascinating life.

Edith Wharton is one of my favorite authors, and I've been waiting to read this autobiography since I saw all of the great reviews when it first came out. It certainly did not disappoint-- chock full of insights about the books and Wharton's life without being too confessional.

I love Edith Wharton's novels, and her autobiography was every bit as wonderful. Beautiful writing and portraits of a world gone by. So many insights about life and her character--I kept wanting to grab a pen to write them down.

Dazzling on memory; characteristically evocative and precise visual description; a social and artistic history of her experience of the period; insightful on the changes wrought by The First World War; and an ability to make Henry James a comic character through anecdote. Lovely book.

This felt very much like an outsider looking in, which wasn't unexpected. Wharton discusses her intimate friendships, adventures, etc. with the classic effect of "you had to be there". No doubt the bulk of this book would have been more engrossing if the reader had indeed "been there".

That being said, Chapter IX is the jewel of the book - outstanding!

A largely charming (but overlong) memoir by a master. The material on Henry James represents the liveliest parts of this memoir. You really get the sense of how decent she was to this grump. I know that the times (and Wharton's temperament) prohibited her from remarking much upon her husband, but this deficiency in candor is more than made up for by the colorful stories and anecdotes that are, in a word, Whartonesque.

This autobiography of Edith Wharton is less about herself than about her illustrious friends: Henry James, Percy Lubbock, Howard Sturgis, and a virtual army of American, English, and French literary nobility. Only in the chapters relative to her childhood and later, of the years of WWI, does she reveal anything of herself. Nothing, in fact, is mentioned about her divorce from her husband in 1913, her subsequent affair with Morton Fullerton, or the fact that she was the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize, in 1921, for her novel, "The Age of Innocence." (I actually read this comprehensive volume in Hard Cover but couldn't find it in the list.)

I thoroughly enjoyed this and now want to visit The Mount even more than before. Even if I didn't enjoy this as a whole, the chapter on Henry James alone would've been worth the read.

This only barely scratched the surface of what I wanted to know from HER. An inordinate amount of time spent on Henry James, and only the smallest references to her marriage (and subsequent divorce).
I thoroughly enjoyed the teeny-tiny account of her creative process, especially regarding the appearance of characters already named. On to the Hermione Lee biography for more!

wanted to love this, i really did. but i also wanted to know something more personal about edith wharton, and although i heard a lot about her friends and europe and new york, i didn't feel like it went as deep as i wanted it to. for instance, what was her marriage really like? her husband seems to be a minor figure in her life based on this account--can that really be true? so although i enjoyed the tone and the writing itself, it was very unsatisfying.

A mostly pleasant diversion.

And I do mean overwhelmingly pleasant - not so much in the enjoyable sense, but in the oh so mannered sense of the time it is about (though maybe not the time in which it was written). So it was good, but as this is the first thing I've read of Wharton - I admit, an odd choice - I found myself not overwhelmingly drawn in by the subject matter.

Add to that my general ignorance of the literary time period in which, and of which, she wrote and the whole thing was kind of disposable to me. People come and go - a lengthy list of names I'm sure making up the who's who of the time - but almost all of them are unknown to me (though H.G. Wells makes a brief -as in one sentence - appearance).

There were exceptions to what saw as disposable. The sections about Henry James were excellent and it was wonderful to get a personal view into his character, especially from someone who was so close to him. Also - and this is where the "mostly" of mostly pleasant comes in - I particularly loved the couple chapters devoted to her experiences during World War I, and the immediate happenings afterwards as she began to see the immutable ways in which the world had changed.

So, overall, this was good. I'm sure I'd have appreciated it more had I been more familiar with her books, but I suppose I'll have to approach this backwards and read some of her novels after the fact. It was good enough to inspire me to do that, so I suppose that will have to do.

If I was a big Wharton fan I would be devouring this.