A Motor-Flight Through France (In Scarce Original Dust Jacket)

Wharton, Edith

Verlag: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1908

Beschreibung

Handsomely bound in finely woven green cloth with blindstamped decorations and bright gilt lettering and designs on the front boards and on the spine. Very clean and tight throughout, with slight separation at the top of the rear hinge. Top edges gilded. In the original dust jacket with blank front and rear flaps and the original price of "$2.00 Net" at the center of the spine. With scattered foxing to the front and rear panels and some loss of paper, about .25" across the central top edges of the jacket. With separations along the folds which have been strengthened with archival tape on the verso. Inside flaps are blank and ivory-toned. A scarce example in dust jacket of Wharton's autumotive adventures through France with Henry James and others. A Motor-Flight Through France, Edith Wharton's first French travel book, has been termed by her biographer R. W. B. Lewis "perhaps the best of Edith Wharton's always superior and original travel books." Based on three automobile journeys taken in 1906 and 1907, the book points up the perfections of France during the Belle Époque. Their journeys were probably one of the chief pleasures of the remaining years of their marriage, which ended in 1913. The years 1906-7 are regarded by Wharton's biographers Shari Benstock and R. W. B. Lewis as the decisive time of Wharton's final expatriation. Her physical residence in the elite Faubourg section of Paris began in 1907, when she and her husband, Teddy, sublet the apartment of the George Vanderbilts in a stately town house at 58 rue de Varenne. In January 1910, the Whartons moved into their own apartment at 53 Rue de Varenne; she was to live in this apartment there until 1920, when she acquired the Pavillon Colombe just outside Paris. Benstock offers a penetrating analysis of Wharton's efforts to find acceptance within the exclusive intellectual and social circles of the Faubourg (Women of the Left Bank: Paris, 1900-1940, 37-38). Wharton wrote several essays for the Atlantic Monthly that appeared in 1906, 1907, and 1908; according to Mary Suzanne Schriber they were expanded for book publication ("Note on the Text," A Motor-Flight Through France, ed. Mary Suzanne Schriber, xvi). The third section of the book was not published in the Atlantic Monthly and may have been written to round out the volume for Scribner's. Wharton was delighted when Henry James took her to call on the elderly English novelist George Meredith in 1908 and learned that he was "flying through France" in her motor at that very moment.(Sarah Bird Wright, Midlothian, VA) First Edition with matching dates of 1908 on the title and copyright pages and "Published October, 1908" with the Scribner's Seal at the bottom of the page. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 1252

Bibliografische Details

Titel: A Motor-Flight Through France (In Scarce ...

Verlag: Charles Scribner's Sons

Erscheinungsdatum: 1908

Einband: Hardcover

Zustand: Near Fine

Zustand des Schutzumschlags: Good

Auflage: 1st Edition.