Glamor and indolence of life in the South of France as seen through Wharton's gaze.

Using previously unexamined and untranslated French sources, Claudine Lesage has illuminated the intertwined characters and important relationships of Wharton’s French life. The bulk of the new material comes from the daybooks of Paul and Minnie Bourget; Wharton’s letters (in French) to Léon Bélugou; and the author’s personal research in Hyères. Highlights include letters used in Wharton’s divorce proceedings and a mysterious autobiographical essay written by Wharton’s lover Morton Fullerton. Most significantly, Wharton’s friendship with Bélugou, absent from most Wharton biographies, is, for the first time, fully recounted through their extensive intimate correspondence. The year 1907 was a milestone in Edith Wharton’s life and work. Unlike Joseph Conrad, who had, virtually overnight, forsaken his native land for an adopted one, Mrs. Wharton’s transition required several years of shuttling back and forth across the Atlantic. At first, all of Europe beckoned to her, but, from 1907 on, Wharton would claim Paris and, after the war, the French countryside as her home. All the while, her work, long regarded as being exclusively American, followed a similar trajectory.

Far from worrying about the onset of war, in the spring of 1938 the burning question on the French Riviera was whether one should curtsey to the Duchess of Windsor. Few of those who had settled there thought much about what was going on in the rest of Europe. It was a golden, glamorous life, far removed from politics or conflict. Featuring a sparkling cast of artists, writers and historical figures including Winston Churchill, Daisy Fellowes, Salvador Dalí, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Eileen Gray and Edith Wharton, with the enigmatic Coco Chanel at its heart, CHANEL'S RIVIERA is a captivating account of a period that saw some of the deepest extremes of luxury and terror in the whole of the twentieth century. From Chanel's first summer at her Roquebrune villa La Pausa (in the later years with her German lover) amid the glamour of the pre-war parties and casinos in Antibes, Nice and Cannes to the horrors of evacuation and the displacement of thousands of families during the Second World War, CHANEL'S RIVIERA explores the fascinating world of the Cote d'Azur elite in the 1930s and 1940s. Enriched with much original research, it is social history that brings the experiences of both rich and poor, protected and persecuted, to vivid life.

The French Riviera of the 20s and 30s, and the celebrities and artists who lived there.

Kate Clephane has lived in exile in France since leaving her husband and infant daughter. She is being called back to New York by her now adult daughter to attend her daughter’s wedding. Complicating already complicated matters her daughter is engaged to her one time lover Chris Fenno, a man who cannot be trusted, and worse yet Kate is still deeply in love with him. A novel of scandal and shame and the upper class.

This collection of essays examines the various social, cultural and historical contexts surrounding Edith Wharton's popular and prolific literary career.

From Hermione Lee, the internationally acclaimed, award-winning biographer of Virginia Woolf and Willa Cather, comes a superb reexamination of one of the most famous American women of letters.Delving into heretofore untapped sources, Lee does away with the image of the snobbish bluestocking and gives us a new Edith Wharton-tough, startlingly modern, as brilliant and complex as her fiction. Born into a wealthy family, Wharton left America as an adult and eventually chose to create a life in France. Her renowned novels and stories have become classics of American literature, but as Lee shows, Wharton's own life, filled with success and scandal, was as intriguing as those of her heroines. Bridging two centuries and two very different sensibilities, Wharton here comes to life in the skillful hands of one of the great literary biographers of our time.

In June 1923, Edith Wharton, who had not set foot on native soil since before the First World War, came home to accept an honorary degree from Yale University. In April 1995, friends of Wharton again convened at Yale. The essays collected in "A Forward Glance: New Essays on Edith Wharton" represent a portion of the ocmplex and varied scholarly work delivered at that conference. -- From publisher's description.

"Beginning with Thomas Jefferson who visited the south of France in 1787, it follows America's journey from a tourist minority to one of the forces of this resort region. It focuses on the way American writers represented the French Riviera and how their writings became a major factor in the promotion of American tourism in southern France"--Provided by publisher.

In Women Writing on the French Riviera Rosemary Lancaster examines the varied literary and artistic works of nine women visitors and their unique contributions to the cultural identity of the Riviera in its seminal rise to fame.