ational Endowment for the Arts READER'S GUIDE ym& _ .INSTITUTE of ., MuseurriandLibrary SERVICES EDITH WHARTON'S The Age of Innocence here ajfe two ways of spreading light; to be he candle or the mirror that reflects it." • DITH WHARTON from her poem, "Vesalius in Zante" Preface Two questions haunt me about Edith Wharton's masterpiece, The Age of Innocence. First, how can a novel with "innocence" in its title be so filled with feverish longing and smoldering desire? Second, how can a love story this passionate express itself with such respectable restraint? The only answer to these questions, I suspect, is Wharton's particular genius for portraying the mysterious contradictions of the human heart. The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts designed to revitalize the role of literary reading in American popular culture. Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, a 2004 NEA report, identified a critical decline in reading for pleasure among American adults. The Big Read aims to address this issue directly by providing citizens with the opportunity to read and discuss a single book within their communities. A great book combines enlightenment with enchantment. It awakens our imagination and enlarges our humanity. It can even offer harrowing insights that somehow console and comfort us. Whether you're a regular reader already or a nonreader making up for lost time, thank you for joining The Big Read. c$a^Nf^'< Dana Gioia Chairman, National Endowment for the Arts Edith Wharton, 1908 "Does no one want to know the truth here, Mr. Archer? The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!" —ELLEN OLENSKA in The Age of Innocence .*> HE BIG READ Introduction to the Novel Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence (1920) begins at the opera on a January evening in the early 1870s. All of fashionable New York is there to see soprano Christine Nilsson sing in Faust. Among them is Newland Archer, an affluent lawyer in his thirties, who is "sincerely yet placidly in love" with the beautiful May Welland. Newland never questions that his fiancee, May, will be the perfect wife — especially since they both come from distinguished families — until her cousin, the exotic Countess Ellen Olenska, returns suddenly home after many years spent in Europe. From the moment Ellen enters the opera in a European-style dress that reveals too much shoulder, she shocks Old New York. When she soon buys a home in an artists' area, she faces criticism from her family. When she attends Sabbath evening music parties with the married Jewish businessman, Julius Beaufort, she encounters more censure. But when she wants to divorce her Polish husband, Count Olenski, she risks public disgrace. The family believes their only hope for social respectability lies in Newland — if he can only persuade Ellen to withdraw her petition for divorce. At first he takes the case so that her secrets will remain hidden from those less sympathetic. But with time, Newland not only falls in love with Ellen — despite his impending wedding to May — he also begins to see the hypocrisy of his world. In a society that believes "divorce is always unpleasant" because of the scandal that results for the family, Newland's deepest beliefs are challenged. Will he follow the wishes of his family and convince Ellen to remain in an oppressive marriage? Or will he risk his own name and encourage Ellen to seek the divorce she wants? The Age of Innocence re-creates New York's Gilded Age, but it also has a great deal to say to the twenty- first century. Ellen's wish to be accepted in America will strike a chord with anyone who's ever felt like an outsider in her own family. Newland's struggle should be familiar to everyone who has ever weighed the social cost of following his desires. The couple's illicit romance — and their commitment not to hurt those around them — linger in the reader's mind with all the persistence of a lifelong regret. National Endowment for the Arts • THE BIG READ 3 Edith Wharton, 1862-1937 Discouraged from reading fiction by her mother, the shy, self-conscious Edith Newbold Jones, born on January 24, 1862, did not seem destined to become one of America's greatest writers. Her life of travel began at age four when her parents left New York for a six-year tour of Europe, with extended stays in Rome and Paris. At nine, she nearly died from t\~phoid fever, an experience that led to chronic fears. Her feelings about her childhood were perhaps best summarized in her 1934 memoir, A Backward Glance: "I was never free from the oppressive sense that I had two absolutely inscrutable beings to please — God & my mother . . . and my mother was the most inscrutable of the two." THE LIFE AND TIMES OF EDITH WHARTON The Jones family eventually returned to New York in 1872. Wharton's parents were so alarmed with her passion for study and her increasing shyness that they defied convention to "bring her out" into society one year early. Edith Jones eventually married her brother's friend, Edward "Teddy" Robbins Wharton, in 1885. Edith Newbold ones in 1 884, one year before her marriage to Teddy Wharton Title page of the first edition of The Decoration of Houses, 1897 Edith Newbold Jones is born January 24, 1862, in New York City. The Joneses move to Europe due to post-Civil War depression in the real estate market 1866. Swedish soprano Christine Nilsson performs the role of Marguerite in Gounod's Faust 1871. The Joneses return to America, dividing their time between New York and Rhode Island, 1872. The Panic of 1873 shatters New York investors. The first Metropolitan Opera House opens on October 22, 1883, with a performance of Faust. Wharton marries Edward "Teddy" Wharton, 1885. Statue of Liberty is dedicated in New York harbor to commemorate the friendship of the U.S. and France, 1886. Wharton's first book published: The Decoration of Houses, co-authored with Ogden Codman.Jr.,1897. Wharton's first short story collection published, The Greater Inclination, 1899. After ten years of a mostly unsatisfying marriage, Edith Wharton had published only a few poems and stories. Literary fame and wealth followed the publication of The House of Mirth (1905), as did her love affair with American journalist Morton Fullerton. Consummated in the spring of 1909, this relationship remained a secret until the discovery of her letters in 1980. Wharton once told Fullerton that he had "given [her] the only moments of real life [she] had ever known." Wharton permanendy left America in 191 1 and sued her husband for divorce in 1913. By this time, Wharton had published her masterpieces Ethan Frome (1911), The Reef{ 1912), and The Custom of the Country (1913). Despite the terror of World War I, France once again became a place of refuge for her as she focused more on charity work than her writing. She established and directed American Hostels for Refugees, which ultimately provided food, clothing, coal, and health care to more than 9,000 refugees. She organized six homes in France for the Children of Flanders Rescue Committee. She visited the French front several times and helped establish treatment programs for tubercular French soldiers. In 1916, she was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor — one of France's highest civilian awards. That same year, death robbed Wharton of Henry James, whose friendship she called "the pride and honour of my life." In Early 1900s After President William McKinley's death, Theodore Roosevelt becomes President, 1901. Roosevelt is elected in his own right in 1904. Late 1900s 11910s Wharton negotiates the purchase of a 113-acre Lenox property in 1901, and moves into what she came to call "The Mount," 1902. The Whartons purchase their first motor-car, a Panhard-Levassor, 1904. The House of Mirth is serialized in Scribner's, January to November 1905; published as a book in October 1905. The Whartons dine with President Roosevelt at the White House, March 1905. Wharton meets Morton Fullerton, 1907. Wharton sues Teddy Wharton for divorce, 1913. Wharton returns to Paris on July 31 , four days before Germany declares war on France, 1914. America enters World War 1, 1917. Armistice signed on November 11, 1918. National Endowment for the Arts • THE BIG READ 5 her memoir, Wharton later reflected that after the devastation of World War I, she "found a momentary escape in going back to [her] childish memories of a long-vanished America" while writing The Age of Innocence (1920). Written in less than eight months, it was serialized in The Pictorial Review from July to October of 1920 and published as a book in October. An immediate bestseller, it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in May 1921; within two years, the novel's sales brought Wharton more than $50,000. With this money, Wharton planted orange orchards and repaired her Paris home, a property she named "Sainte Claire le Chateau." Her last visit to America in 1923 was to accept an honorary Doctor of Letters from Yale. Along with her lifelong passions for gardening and traveling, Wharton continued to write to the end of her life — most notably her memoir A Backward Glance (1934). A stroke in June led to her death on August 1 1, 1937. Edith Wharton is buried near one of her lifelong friends, lawyer Walter Berry, in the Cimetiere des Gonards, in Versailles, France. On July 14, 1919, Wharton sees the Allied armies ride under the Arc de Triomphe. The Age of Innocence is published, 1920; awarded the Pulitzer Prize, 1921. The Great Gatsby is published, 1925; Wharton meets F. Scott Fitzgerald later that year. Charles Lindbergh flies his Spirit of St. Louis from New York to Paris, the first successful nonstop transatlantic flight, 1927. The stock market crashes on Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929. 6 THE BIG READ • National Endowment for the Arts Franklin Roosevelt elected U.S. President, 1932. Wharton dies in France, 1937. Wharton's unfinished novel, The Buccaneers, posthumously published, 1938. World War II begins when Germany invades Poland, 1939. 1 1 l» ' tj**^ ■ In 1899, Edith Wharton fell in love with the Berkshires of western Massachusetts. She negotiated the purchase of the 1 1 3-acre Lenox property for $40,600 in 1901, and in 1902, she moved in with her husband, Teddy. Named The Mount, the house and gardens created a stable, tranquil environment where Wharton wrote her first bestseller, The House of Mirth. As Mount historian Scott Marshall has said, "The Mount was to be the scene of many of her greatest triumphs and of some of her deepest sorrows." The house and gardens have been restored and are open to the public (www.edithwharton.org). \ have someti a woman s n ght that e a great house full of i hall, through going in and out; the drawing room, where one receives formal visits ... but beyond that ... in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes." —EDITH WHARTON from "The Fullness of Life" National Endowment for the Arts • THE BIG READ 7 Edith Wharton's New York After the Civil War ended in 1865, Americans enjoyed a robust economy driven by the rapid growth of banking, railroads, and industry — a period referred to as the Gilded Age. A few investors, sometimes called robber barons, used their fortunes to build such notable New York institutions as the American Museum of Natural History (1869), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1872), and the Metropolitan Opera House (1883). As Wharton notes in The Age of Innocence, this Opera House was intended to "compete in costliness and splendor with those of the great European capitals." It became the hub of a world in which the type of carriage waiting outside signified the owner's wealth and social position. Ttaveling in a private brougham, a landau, or a Brown coupe can be compared to driving a luxury sportscar, a minivan, or a jeep — the mode of transport indicating economic status and family size as well as personal taste. During the Gilded Age, social classes in New York City became increasingly stratified. Money mattered, but the way a family made its fortune — and how long they had possessed it — counted most of all. New York's Central Park circa 1890-1910 In the 1890s, social adviser Samuel Ward McAllister and society matron Caroline Astor created "the Four Hundred," a list comprised of a carefully selected group of upper- class families deemed the social elite. This social elite upheld a strict dress code, especially for evening engagements. For gendemen, getting "dressed for dinner" meant changing from a suit into a tuxedo. Women always wore dresses, and even the colors and styles were prescribed. Ellen Olenska's gown — dark blue velvet with a clasp under her bosom — is an unconventional color, fabric, and style to wear to a New York opera. This "Josephine look" or Empire waist contrasted with the plunging necklines covered by lace worn by fashionable American women. In this way, Ellen's dress becomes an early sign that her real home mav not be Old New York. 8 THE BIG READ " National Endowment for the Arts Divorce in Old New York Divorce in the late nineteenth- century was rare, expensive, and difficult to obtain. Despite a political philosophy based on one's "pursuit of happiness," an American marriage could not be dissolved for so subjective a quest. Divorce was illegal in many states; others allowed it for adultery only. Some courts would grant a divorce in cases of abandonment or abuse — usually after a prolonged interval. Remarriage, sometimes even for the innocent spouse, was seldom granted. Property laws, lack of education, and diminished work opportunities discouraged many women from seeking a divorce. The social price was high. Slander and alienation were costs not to be taken lighdy in a society such as Old New York where a respectable name was one's most valuable asset. Still, from 1889 to 1906, the United States had the highest divorce rate in the world. In December 1908, Teddy Wharton told his wife that he had embezzled $50,000 from her trust funds and had purchased a Boston apartment where he was living with a mistress. It was not until September 1911 that Edith Wharton left America permanendy, entrusting her husband to sell their Massachusetts home, The Mount. Even then, her <£t~S£!s?*» OF THE 4G£ ar»«w ****** arton *- ^^7 "'fit 7J" *^«*t .» V I** This advertisement for The Age of Innocence reflects Appleton's aggressive marketing campaign, c. 1920. "Our ideas about marriage and divorce are particularly old-fashioned. Our legislation favors divorce — our social customs don't." — NEWLAND ARCHER to Ellen Olenska in The Age of Innocence fear of the social repercussions kept her from immediately seeking a divorce. But Teddy's increasingly manic-depressive behavior ultimately led her to petition the French court for a divorce on grounds of adultery in 1913 — after twenty-eight years of marriage. Wharton's own courage is reflected in several of her female protagonists, National Endowment for the Arts • THE BIG READ 9 and her fiction consistently takes up the subject of marriage and divorce, including the cost of divorce for children in The Custom of the Country (1913) and The Mother s Recompense (1925). But nowhere is it more at the center of the drama than in The Age of Innocence (1920), as the Mingott-Archer- Welland families push lawyer Newland Archer to take the case of the Countess Ellen Olenska. As Newland somewhat ironically tells a family member, "European society is not given to divorce: Countess Olenska thought she would be conforming to American ideas in asking for her freedom." Whatever cruelty Ellen may have suffered from her husband, the family believes that nothing is worse than a scandalous divorce. The novel's final dinner party demonstrates how far one New York family will go in the 1870s in order to remain ostensibly innocent. rLOWLKb are important symbols in Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence. Many Victorian families had a book on the "language of flowers" in their home, or even a flower dictionary. Giving flowers was not only a way to express wealth, but also a way to communicate a subtle message. Every morning during his engagement, Newland Archer sends lilies-of-the-valley to May Welland. Lilies-of-the-valley symbolize purity, modesty, and return of happiness. Newland believes May to be as naive and innocent as these white flowers suggest. After Newland's first visit to Ellen Olenska's home, he sends her a bouquet of yellow roses. <4^|W The message of a yellow rose is more complicated. Yellow roses can represent . jealousy, infidelity, friendship, or a decrease of love. 'His eye lit on a cluster of yellow roses. He had never seen any as sun-golden before, and his first impulse was to send them to May instead of the lilies. But they did not look like her — there was something too rich, too strong, in their fiery beauty." — from The Age of Innocence National Endowment for the Arts Wharton at the Movies BY DAVID KIPEN For a woman who reputedly never set foot in a movie theater, Edith Wharton has given filmmakers a lot of good material. Except for the 1940s and 1970s, every decade since a 1918 version of The House of Mirth has seen at least one Wharton adaptation. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote tide cards for a silent 1923 adaptation of Wharton's 1922 novel, The Glimpses of the Moon. Critics split over the most recent film of The House of Mirth (2000), in which TheX Files' Gillian Anderson played Lily Bart. For television, Maggie Wadey adapted Wharton's unfinished novel, The Buccaneers, into a 1995 Anglo-American mini-series that long-memoried viewers still cherish. The Age of Innocence has been filmed three times, first a 1924 silent, the second in 1930 starring Irene Dunne as Ellen. But the adaptation that by rights should have ignited a Wharton revival remains the third version of The Age of Innocence, from 1993. Martin Scorsese's supple direction of Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Winona Ryder achieves a vision of brocaded tragedy, scrupulously adapted by Jay Cocks and Scorsese Michelle Pfeiffer as Ellen Olenska and Daniel Day-Lewis as Newland Archer in the 1993 film The Age of Innocence and romantically scored by Elmer Bernstein. Over it all, Joanne Woodward's tart narration carries Wharton's voice where the writer's own life never took her. "He was not sure that he wanted to see the Countess Olenska again.... He simply felt that if he could carry away the vision of the spot of earth she walked on, and the way the sky and sea enclosed it, the rest of the world might seem less empty." — from The Age of Innocence National Endowment for the Arts • THE BIG READ \ \ Wharton and Her Other Works Edith Wharton was one of the twentieth-century's most prolific, wealthy, and distinguished American writers. The author of more than forty-five books, she published poetry, non-fiction, short stories, and novels to both popular and critical acclaim. Poetry Wharton's first published work was a pamphlet called Verses (1878), privately printed by her mother when she was only sixteen. She did not publish her next volume of poetry, Artemis to Actaeon (1909), until she was forty-seven. Perhaps most poignant is "The Mortal Lease," a collection of eight sonnets that veil her feelings about her affair with Morton Fullerton. Nonfiction Her first published book as an adult was The Decoration of Houses (1897), co-authored with Ogden Coalman, Jr., a work that radically denounced Victorian interior design principles and inspired future decorators such as Elsie de Wolfe — one of the profession's earliest pioneers. Wharton's financial success allowed her to pursue her passion for travel, exploring the world in ways unknown to most women (or even men) of her day. Her seven travel books about France, Africa, and Italy comprise an often-overlooked body of work that influenced her fiction and demonstrate her knowledge of architecture, art, religion, history, and mythology. In The Writing of Fiction (1925), Wharton addresses students of literature and future writers. In A Backward Glance (1934) — an interesting yet impersonal memoir — Wharton reflects upon her travels, friendships, and writing. 12 THE BIG READ • National Endowment for the Arts Short Stories Like many of her contemporaries, Wharton wrote short stories before writing novels. Her first short story collection, The Greater Inclination (1899), was published at age thirty- seven, and her last collection, The World Over (1936), was published the year before her death. Today her most frequendy anthologized stories are "Roman Fever" and "Belated Souls." Novels and Novellas Most of Wharton's novels were first serialized in magazines, giving her the chance to see how the public responded. In 1905, The House of Mirth enjoyed the most rapid sales of any novel published by Scribners up to that time. Still one of Wharton's most praised works, the novel traces the tragedy of Lily Bart, a beautiful single woman in New York, left penniless after her father's bankruptcy and her mother's death. The thwarted love stories told in Madame de Treymes (1907), The Reef (19 12), and The Custom of the Country (1913) foreshadow The Age of Innocences Newland Archer and Ellen Olenska. The novellas Ethan Frome (1911) and Summer (1913) are set in western Massachusetts Edith Wharton at her writing desk at the Pavilion Colombe in France, 1931 villages, a region Wharton knew intimately from living in Lenox. Among her later novels, The Glimpses of the Moon (1922) and The Mothers Recompense (1924) are perhaps her best. If in that moment we are all we are We live enough. Let this for all requite. Do I not know, some winged things from far Are borne along illimitable night To dance their lives out in a single flight Between the moonrise and the setting star? —EDITH WHARTON from Sonnet Vot her poem "The Mortal Lease" National Endowment for the Arts • THE BIG READ | 3 Discussion Questions 3. Edith Wharton's original title for The Age of Innocence was "Old New York." Which title do you think is more fitting? In the first chapter of The Age of Innocence, the narrator describes Newland Archer as being "at heart a dilettante, and thinking over a pleasure to come often gave him a subder satisfaction than its realization." How does this brief character analysis foreshadow his future choices? The novel is told entirely from Newland Archer's point of view by an unnamed omniscient narrator. How does this shape the reader's understanding of May Welland and Ellen Olenska? 7. In Book One, Newland compares marriage to a "voyage on uncharted seas," noting that May's "frankness and innocence were only an artificial product." How does the action of Book Two prove his early intuition correct? How does Newland view himself compared to other men in Old New York, especially Julius Beaufort? It may be easy to forget that Ellen Olenska is not especially beautiful. Why are both Newland and Julius so drawn to her? What else do these two men have in common? In contrast to her artistic European cousin, May Welland is an accomplished athlete. What does her skill in archery reveal about her character? "No novel worth anything can be anything but a novel *with a purpose,' and if anyone who cared for the moral issue did not see in my work that I care for it, I should have no one to blame but myself." —EDITH WHARTON in reference to The House of Mirth fMG READ • National Endowment for the Arts IS 8. How does Newland feel the first time he visits Ellen Olenska's home? What distinguishes it from other homes in fashionable New York? 9. Newland's relationship with Ellen leads him to see "how elementary his own principles had always been." Which principles, in particular, does she challenge? 10. What is revealed about Ellen's life in Europe? What is concealed? What kind of cruelty did Ellen endure as the wife of Count Olenski? What kind of cruelty does she experience in America? 11. In Book Two, "the whole of New York was darkened by the tale of Beaufort's dishonor." What is this failure, and why does it rupture all of society? 12. Is there an innocent character in the novel? Is there a villain? What might playwright David Ives mean when he says the novel is "an extraordinary portrait of the villainy of innocence"? 13. Does Wharton's narrator condemn this society or does she merely describe the hypocrisies of New York in the 1870s? Is the tone sarcastic, ironic, or mocking? 14. In her memoir, A Backward Glance, Wharton reveals a clue to her fiction: "My last page is always latent in my first; but the intervening windings of the way become clear only as I write." How is this true in The Age of Innocence? If you liked The Age of Innocence, you might enjoy: Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Parma (1839) John Galsworthy's The Man of Property (1906) Willa Cather's A Lost Lady ( 1 923) F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925) If you want to read some books Wharton admired, you might enjoy: Jane Austen's Emma (1816) Honore de Balzac's Pere Goriot ( 1 835) Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady (1881) Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan llyich (1886) National Endowment for the Arts • THE BIG READ | 5 Additional Resources Selected Works by Edith Wharton The Decoration of Houses, co-authored with Ogden Codman, Jr., 1897 (interior design) Italian Villas and Their Gardens, 1904 (essays) The House of Mirth, 1905 (novel) Madame de Treymes, 1907 (novella) A Motor-Flight Through France, 1908 (travel) Ethan Frome, 1911 (novella) The Reef, 1912 (novel) The Custom of the Country, 1913 (novel) Summer, 1917 (novella) French Ways and Their Meaning, 1919 (cultural criticism) The Age of Innocence, 1920 (novel) Old New York, 1924 (a collection of four novellas) The Mothers Recompense, 1925 (novel) The Writing of Fiction, 1925 (criticism) A Backward Glance, 1934 (memoir) Posthumously Collected Works Auchincloss, Louis, ed. Edith Wharton: Selected Poems. New York: Library of America, 2005. Lewis, R.W.B. and Nancy Lewis, eds. The Letters of Edith Wharton. New York: Scribner's, 1975. •*. Edith Wharton with her dogs, Miza and Mimi, in 1890 Wharton, Edith. The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton. New York: Scribner's, 1973. Wright, Sarah Bird, ed. Edith Wharton Abroad: Selected Travel Writings, 1888-1920. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1995. Other Works about Wharton Benstock, Shari. No Gifts from Chance: A Biography of Edith Wharton. New York: Scribner's, 1994. Dwight, Eleanor. Edith Wharton: An Extraordinary Life, An Illustrated Biography. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994. Lee, Hermione. Edith Wharton. New York: Knopf, 2007. | 6 THE BIG READ • National Endowment for the Arts NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS A great nation deserves great art. ..INSTITUTED/ „ .. Museum, -(Library SERVICES AH MIDWEST The National Endowment for the Arts is a public agency dedicated to supporting excellence in the arts — both new and established — bringing the arts to all Americans, and providing leadership in arts education. Established by Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government, the Endowment is the nation's largest annual hinder of the arts, bringing great art to all 50 states, including rural areas, inner cities, and military bases. The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation's 122,000 libraries and 17,500 museums. The Institute's mission is to create strong libraries and museums that connect people to information and ideas. The Institute works at the national level and in coordination with state and local organizations to sustain heritage, culture, and knowledge; enhance learning and innovation; and support professional development. Arts Midwest connects people throughout the Midwest and the world to meaningful arts opportunities, sharing creativity, knowledge, and understanding across boundaries. One of six non-profit regional arts organizations in the United States, Arts Midwest's history spans more than 25 years. Additional support for The Big Read has also been provided by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Works Consulted Benstock, Shari. No Gifts from Chance: A Biography of Edith Wharton. New York Scribner's, 1994. Colquitt, Clare, Susan Goodman, and Candace Waid, eds. A Forward Glance: New Essays on Edith Wharton. Newark University of Delaware Press, 1999. Lee, Hermione. Edith Wharton. New York Knopf, 2007. Waid, Candace, ed. The Age of Innocence: Norton Critical Edition. New York Norton, 2002. Works Cited Wharton, Edith. A Backward Glance. 1934. New York Library of America, 1990. . Selected Poems. Ed. Louis Auchincloss. New York Library of America, 2005. . The Age of Innocence. 1920. New York Modern Library, 1999. . The Writing of Fiction. 1925. New York Touchsrone, 1997. Acknowledgments David Kipen, NEA Director of Lirerarure, National Reading Initiatives Writer: Erika Koss for the National Endowment for the Arts, with a preface by Dana Gioia; "Wharton at the Movies" by David Kipen Series Editor: Erika Koss for the National Endowment for the Arts Image Editor: Liz Edgar Hernandez for the National Endowment for the Arts Graphic Design: Fletcher Design/Washington, DC Image Credits All images of Edith Wharton and The Mount reprinted by permission of the estate of Edith Wharton and the Watkins/Loomis Agency. Cover Portrait: John SherfRus for The Big Read Inside Front Coven Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Page 1: Caricature of Dana Gioia by John Sherffius. Page 2: New York City, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division; book cover, courtesy of Modern Library, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Page 4: Edith Wharton as a child and book cover, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library; Edith Wharton, 1877, © Bettmann/CORBIS. Page 5: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. Page 6: Edith Wharton, Edith Wharton Restoration Archives, The Mount; Arc de Triomphe, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. Page 7: both images, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Page 8: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. Page 9: Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Page 10: Roses, Getty Images; lilies-of-the-valley, Veer. Page 1 1: © Sygma/Corbis. Page 12: All books covers except New York Stories, courtesy of Modern Library, a division of Random House, Inc., New York; New York Storks, Courtesy of NYRB Classics, a division of New York Review Books, New York. Page 13: Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Page 14: Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Page 16: Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. This publication is published by: National Endowment for the Arts (202) 682-5400 • www.nea.gov 1 100 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. • Washington, DC 20506-0001 www.NEABigRead.org July 2008 In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs." —EDITH WHARTON from The Age of Innocence NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts designed to restore reading to the center of American culture. The NEA presents The Big Read in partnership with the Institute of Museum and library Services and in cooperation with Arts Midwest. •%» . .iNsmim • ... :-.\, Museum.~,Library A great nation deserves great art.