A broken wing
When, towards the end of her life, Edith Wharton named her five personal favourite works among her fiction, one short novel featured on the list: Summer. Published in 1917, Summer was the most important work the writer produced during the years of the First World War. Despite Wharton’s own judgement, however, Summer has never found...
Ghosts of New York
I have an American heiress to thank for leading me to Edith Wharton. I was a teenager – lank-haired, history addict, eye for drama – and I was visiting Blenheim Palace with my parents when I caught sight of a creature from the Gilded Age. Consuelo Vanderbilt, wife of the 9th Duke of Marlborough, looked...
