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    A Backward Glance
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    A Backward Glance
    Unavailable
    A Backward Glance
    Ebook394 pages6 hours

    A Backward Glance

    By Edith Wharton

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Originally published in 1934, A Backward Glance is a memoir written by Wharton in her last years. The book dwells on Wharton's early and middle life leading up to and including her experiences during the First World War. The final chapter covers her life after the war, close on twenty years, emphasising a Mediterranean cruise and the unexpected death of her friend Geoffrey Scott.

    This is most certainly a writer's memoir rather than an autobiographical narrative. The writing itself is poised and mature; Wharton here reads like a confident artisan, at ease with her profession and happy to reel off her thought and remembrances. The reason it isn't an autobiography in the strictest sense is that Wharton leaves so much of her life out of the book, some of it for obvious reasons – such as the Morton Fullerton affair – and others maybe because she just can't be bothered. That aside, it's a joy to read.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLulu.com
    Release dateNov 20, 2013
    ISBN9781291637205
    Unavailable
    A Backward Glance
    Author

    Edith Wharton

    Edith Wharton was born in 1862 to a prominent and wealthy New York family. In 1885 she married Boston socialite 'Teddy' Wharton but the marriage was unhappy and they divorced in 1913. The couple travelled frequently to Europe and settled in France, where Wharton stayed until her death in 1937. Her first major novel was The House of Mirth (1905); many short stories, travel books, memoirs and novels followed, including Ethan Frome (1911) and The Reef (1912). She was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature with The Age of Innocence (1920) and she was thrice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. She was also decorated for her humanitarian work during the First World War.

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    Reviews for A Backward Glance

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    • 5/5
      I found this book in the mailroom in my building, and even though I read Ethan Frome in high school and loathed it, I was a little bit curious about Edith Wharton, whose American home "The Mount" in Lenox, MA I had toured. At first I was put off by her privileged childhood, and not sure the book was worth the time. I persevered, and was rewarded. Her writing is so clear, obvious from her rendering of her writing process, description of many friends, and life in New York, Lenox, England and France.I went through the book with a heavy highlighter. I learned that in her New York social circle, leisure was the expected occupation, and her family and friends never mentioned any of her writings, as if it was an embarrassment. Nor did they discuss anyone else's books. They were not readers at all, and she was quite an anomaly.Her family was so disturbed at her bookishness that they scheduled her debut at 17. After she married, at 23, she and her husband began to travel, and Edith found her own society. She discusses her writing process in the chapter "Secret Garden." Although I don't write fiction, I have always been curious about how different writers do it, and her description was fascinating. There is a chapter about Henry James, a lifelong friend of hers. She has a great admiration for him and his writing, but in describing some of his interactions with others, she revealed him as a rather nasty critic who could dish it out but couldn't take it himself, though she doesn't seem to see it that way. To me, who has enjoyed several of his books, he seems a rather petty and particular old bachelor. During WWI, she was living in France, and very involved in supporting the war effort. I would have liked to read more about that. It surprised me that her most famous and popular novel, The Age of Innocence, was written after the end of the war, in a period when she was recuperating from the effects of living through the war. The Age of Innocence was set in an old New York of her youth, a world that no longer existed. Perhaps time and distance had distilled that world for her, perhaps looking back shielded her from thinking about the horrors of the war in France. And now I am eager to read some of her novels.
    • 3/5
      don't quite know what to say about this. almost nothing about her personal life which one usually expects a memoir to be about. lots of travelling, friends--mostly men. i don't really enjoy wharton's fiction so why would i enjoy this? this book is not in any of the memoir books i have???
    • 5/5
      Edith Wharton writes with humility, despite being born into a wealthy family and achieving literary success during her lifetime. She writes with grace, choosing not to divulge details of an unhappy marriage and divorce. She writes with wit and candor of her travels and many friendships that enriched her life. It is fitting that Edith Wharton chose the title for her autobiography from the words of Walt Whitman, a man she much admired: ?So here I sit gossiping in the early candle-light of old age--I and my book--casting backward glances over our travel?d road.? I?m so glad Mrs. Wharton was able to look backward from the vantage point of her 70-plus years when she wrote this autobiography to share the many experiences that influenced her writing over the course of her journey through life.
    • 4/5
      This is more of a literary memoir than an autobiography, although definitely worthy of a read by anyone who enjoys Wharton's fiction. The book traces the earliest beginnings of young Edith's desire to create stories and goes on to describe her growing friendships with other authors, extensive travels, active social life, and publication successes. Wharton has a wealth of anecdotes about her friends and acquaintances, but little to say about herself or her personal life. Her husband is mentioned in no more than five sentences in the entire book. Not to be missed, however, is a fat section on Henry James in both his middle and older years. The book really ends at World War I. There is some general commentary on the hardships of the war and some complaints about the coarseness of "the modern world," but nothing of any substance.
    • 5/5
      I was tickled that the divorce was somehow dropped from Wharton's memoir. Edith Wharton had such a mess of a marriage I was greedy to read about it, but she didn't budge in the telling. Still, a book you shouldn't miss if literary memoir is your bailiwick.