Telling the Truth Through Fiction

Telling the Truth Through Fiction

Sometimes it can be easier to tell the truth about people and social groups in fiction than in memoir; Edith Wharton’s novels “ring true” in their astute observations about people of her social milieu in New York, the Berkshires and Europe. In this intensive one-day...

Edith Wharton and the Landscape of Childhood

Lately I have been reading Edith Wharton’s memoir, A Backward Glance, and I am most struck by the early chapters when she describes her childhood. The young Edith was a dreamy, sensitive child who loved nothing so much as rambles in the countryside, and who was...