Edith Wharton, Hermione Lee
Edith Wharton, Hermione Lee
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Edith Wharton
Ambassador Book Awards

Author: Hermione Lee

Narrator: Kate Reading

Abridged: 8 hr 38 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/10/2007


Synopsis

The definitive biography of one of America’s greatest writers, from the author of the acclaimed masterpiece Virginia Woolf.
Born in 1862, Edith Wharton escaped the suffocating fate of the well-born female, traveled adventurously in Europe and eventually settled in France. After tentative beginnings, she developed a forceful literary professionalism and thrived in a luminous. Wharton’s life was fed by nonliterary enthusiasms as well: her fabled houses and gardens, her heroic relief efforts during the Great War, the culture of the Old World, which she never tired of absorbing. Yet intimacy eluded her.
With profound empathy and insight, Lee brilliantly interweaves Wharton’s life with the evolution of her writing, the full scope of which shows her to be far more daring than her stereotype as lapidarian chronicler of the Gilded Age. In its revelation of both the woman and the writer, Edith Wharton is a landmark biography.

About The Author

Hermione Lee is a biographer, critic, teacher of literature, and president of Wolfson College, University of Oxford. Among her many works are literary biographies of Willa Cather, Virginia Woolf and Edith Wharton, and Penelope Fitzgerald, which won the James Tait Black Prize and the Plutarch Award for the best biography of 2014. She is also the author of critical books on Elizabeth Bowen and Philip Roth. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society of Literature, and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was made a CBE in 2003 for services to literature, and a DBE in 2013 for services to literary scholarship. She lives in Oxford and Yorkshire.Kate Reading is the recipient of three AudioFile Earphones Awards, and has narrated everything from Patricia Cornwell to George Eliot. Her favorite BOT recordings include Like Water for ChocolateMiddlemarch, and Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Times series, which she narrated with her husband, Michael Kramer.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Emily on May 05, 2009

Although I have almost zero interest in military strategy, I do believe I would read a biography of Vice Admiral Nelson if Hermione Lee wrote one. Her prose is an absolute pleasure, she's insightful and nuanced, and I'm very lucky that she happens to specialize in authors of the late nineteenth and......more

Goodreads review by Judy on October 29, 2012

I've become such a fan of Wharton's works in recent years that I picked up this incredibly comprehensive, exhaustively researched, and extremely well written biography. While I onlyl read about half-way into the book's nearly 800 pages, I enjoyed what I learned about Wharton and her development as a......more

Goodreads review by Lee Anne on November 22, 2012

Edith Wharton is in my "big three" favorite authors (the other two being W. Somerset Maugham and Thomas Hardy). My daughter's middle name is Edith, mainly because of my love of Edith Wharton's books. If you have never read one of her books, I suggest you go pick up a copy of Custom of the Country (W......more

Goodreads review by Becky on July 04, 2011

In short, Lee's biography is more than just a book about the famous author Edith Wharton. In this densely written book, we learn about the culture of turn of the century, upper-class society in New York City. We learn about gardens and landscaping in the United States in comparison to Italy and othe......more

Goodreads review by Captain Sir Roddy, R.N. (Ret.) on June 02, 2014

I know that some readers grouse about Lee's description of Wharton's love of gardening and architecture, but what the hell, this was part-and-parcel of Edith Wharton's life, and was reflected throughout her short stories and novels. I think Hermione Lee has done a magnificent job of capturing the hu......more


Quotes

“Lively . . . Insightful . . . Thorough and intelligent . . .This meticulous, generous biography is likely to suffice for a long time . . . One can at last grasp the full range of Wharton’s writing and the full power of her energy.”
–Diane Johnson, Washington Post Book World

“A splendid biography, extremely rich in social and historical detail, a telling picture of the many years Wharton’s life spanned . . . Biography is usually the revenge of little people on big people . . .but Lee is subtle and big-hearted enough to understand her subject . . .  Lee never reduces Wharton’s books to veiled autobiography, just as she is never reluctant to interpret them in the light of Wharton’s life . . . A sophisticated, finely written portrait . . . Edith Wharton would have been horrified by the ‘indiscretions’ in this biography, but it is the balanced, richly detailed, and researched portrait she deserves.”
–Edmund White, The New York Review of Books

“A rich tapestry. There is so much here . . . Edith Wharton shimmers with details about a vanished world, and Lee . . . brings it to vivid life.”
–Jacqueline Blais, USA Today

“A remarkable feat . . . Nobody has done Edith Wharton such careful justice as Lee.”
–Claire Messud, New York Times Book Review

“Magnificent . . . Unsurpassable in scope and surely in sensitivity . . . Filled to bursting with the friends, travels, projects and writings that engaged Wharton’s attention and energies.”
–Linda Simon, Newsday

“Groundbreaking . . . A sophisticated, persuasive, powerfully intelligent masterwork.”
–Lisa Shea, Elle

“Enables readers to feel they have known Mrs. W. all their lives.”
–Barbara Amiel, Wall Street Journal

“Stunning . . . Rich . . . Wonderfully humanizing.”
–Megan O’Grady, Vogue

“Rich . . . Fine . . . Much more than a literary study.”
–Bruce Allen, The Washington Times

“Elegant . . . not only the best book on its subject, but one of the finest literary biographies to appear in recent years.”
–Greg Johnson, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“A fascinating portrait of a brilliant writer.”
The Economist

“Absorbing . . . An exemplary biography . . . Sure to be the standard work on Wharton for years to come.”
Kirkus

“A major achievement . . . In no other biography is there a more perceptive analysis of how Wharton’s life was reflected in her work.”
Publishers Weekly

“Tremendous . . . Enlightening . . . Rises to landmark status . . . The formidable Mrs. Wharton is given great humanity here.”
Booklist

“The fullest biography of Wharton to date . . . Superb in using the fiction as a way to read the life, defining their relation in a way that is at once seamless but never simplified . . . Lee’s portraiture at its best seems Proustian.”
–Michael Gorra, Times Literary Supplement (London)

“Monumentally conceived and impressively executed . . . Lee is out to understand Wharton, not to vilify or sanctify her . . .  She is a discriminating and generous critic who offers full, fresh and incisive discussions of all the novels and scores of the short stories.”
–Elaine Showalter, The Guardian (London)

“Epic and definitive . . . Lee is a confident and vivid critic.”
–Jane Shilling, The Times (London)

“This is a glorious biography . . . The time is ripe for a new biography of Edith Wharton of this intimacy and on this scale . . . Lee the biographer pursues her subject down every winding corridor, into every hidden passage and dark corner . . . Her critical exploration of Edith Wharton’s work is dazzlingly assured . . . A feat of exhaustive research, and finely tuned to Wharton’s creative achievement at the same time . . . [Wharton] could scarcely have failed to be impressed by . . . its artistic sympathy, its sonorous depths, and its soaring conception.”
–Mark Bostridge, The Independent on Sunday (London)

“Excellent . . . Particularly masterful in her discussion of Wharton’s fiction . . . A magnificent and subtle biography of a magnificent and subtle writer.”
–Caroline Moore, Sunday Telegraph (London)

“Lee’s subtle and painstaking ability to illuminate the work with the life, and to make the life itself so interesting makes this a superb biography.”
–Colm Tóibín, The Irish Times


Awards

  • National Book Critics Circle Awards