Edith Wharton
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Narrated by:
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Kate Reading
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By:
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Hermione Lee
About this listen
Born in 1862, Wharton escaped the suffocating fate of the well-born female, traveled adventurously in Europe and eventually settled in France. After tentative beginnings, she developed a forceful literary professionalism and thrived in a luminous society. Her life was fed by nonliterary enthusiasms as well: her fabled houses and gardens and the culture of the Old World, which she never tired of absorbing. Yet intimacy eluded her.
With profound empathy and insight, Lee brilliantly interweaves Wharton's life with the evolution of her writing, the full scope of which shows her to be far more daring than her stereotype as lapidarian chronicler of the Gilded Age. In its revelation of both the woman and the writer, Edith Wharton is a landmark biography.
Listen to the classics: explore our list of Edith Wharton titles.©2007 Hermione Lee (P)2007 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Lively . . . Insightful . . . Thorough and intelligent . . .This meticulous, generous biography is likely to suffice for a long time . . . One can at last grasp the full range of Wharton’s writing and the full power of her energy.” (Diane Johnson, Washington Post Book World)
“A splendid biography, extremely rich in social and historical detail, a telling picture of the many years Wharton’s life spanned . . . Biography is usually the revenge of little people on big people . . .but Lee is subtle and big-hearted enough to understand her subject . . . Lee never reduces Wharton’s books to veiled autobiography, just as she is never reluctant to interpret them in the light of Wharton’s life . . . A sophisticated, finely written portrait . . . Edith Wharton would have been horrified by the ‘indiscretions’ in this biography, but it is the balanced, richly detailed, and researched portrait she deserves.” (Edmund White, The New York Review of Books)
“A rich tapestry. There is so much here . . . Edith Wharton shimmers with details about a vanished world, and Lee . . . brings it to vivid life.” (Jacqueline Blais, USA Today)
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- How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin-de-Siecle Paris
- By: Caroline Weber
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 29 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Geneviève Halévy Bizet Straus; Laure de Sade, Comtesse de Adhéaume de Chevigné; and Élisabeth de Riquet de Caraman-Chimay, the Comtesse Greffulhe--these were the three superstars of fin-de-siècle Parisian high society who, as Caroline Weber says, "transformed themselves, and were transformed by those around them, into living legends: paragons of elegance, nobility, and style."
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Enthralling, entertaining and brilliant
- By Uli Baer on 01-14-19
By: Caroline Weber
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Georgette Heyer
- Biography of a Bestseller
- By: Jennifer Kloester
- Narrated by: Phyllida Nash
- Length: 14 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Georgette Heyer remains an enduring international best seller, read and loved by four generations of readers and extolled by today's best-selling authors. Despite her enormous popularity, she never gave an interview or appeared in public. Georgette Heyer wrote her first novel, The Black Moth, when she was 17 in order to amuse her convalescent brother. It was published in 1921 to instant success, and 90 years later it has never been out of print.
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Heyer as a person
- By Jerri C on 06-15-15
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Ted Hughes
- The Unauthorized Life
- By: Jonathan Bate
- Narrated by: Mike Grady
- Length: 25 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Ted Hughes, poet laureate, was one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. With an equal gift for poetry and prose, and with a soul as capacious as any poet in history, he was also a prolific children's writer and has been hailed as the greatest English letter writer since John Keats. His magnetic personality and insatiable appetite for friendship, love, and life also attracted more scandal than any poet since Lord Byron.
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Phenomenal thanks to narrator!
- By equinox14 on 06-26-16
By: Jonathan Bate
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I Am Dynamite!
- A Life of Nietzsche
- By: Sue Prideaux
- Narrated by: Nicholas Guy Smith
- Length: 17 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Nietzsche wrote that all philosophy is autobiographical, and in this vividly compelling, myth-shattering biography, Sue Prideaux brings listeners into the world of this brilliant, eccentric, and deeply troubled man, illuminating the events and people that shaped his life and work. I Am Dynamite! is the essential biography for anyone seeking to understand history's most misunderstood philosopher.
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Fascinating; tragic
- By Cineaste21 on 12-30-18
By: Sue Prideaux
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Magnificent Rebels
- The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self
- By: Andrea Wulf
- Narrated by: Julie Teal
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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When did we begin to be as self-centered as we are today? At what point did we expect to have the right to determine our own lives? When did we first ask the question, how can I be free? It all began in the 1790s in a quiet university town in Germany when a group of playwrights, poets, and writers put the self at center stage in their thinking, writing, and their lives.
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fascinating overall, too much drama
- By soup cook on 11-27-22
By: Andrea Wulf
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Isak Dinesen
- The Life of a Storyteller
- By: Judith Thurman
- Narrated by: Davina Porter
- Length: 21 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Isak Dinesen earned international fame for Seven Gothic Tales and Out of Africa, and other stories that skillfully combine elements of fable, social conflict, and psychological drama. She was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize. Yet the story of her life - her travels, affairs, and friendships - remains the greatest story of all.
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over-written
- By Jacqui Good on 10-19-18
By: Judith Thurman
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When Paris Sizzled
- The 1920s Paris of Hemingway, Chanel, Cocteau, Cole Porter, Josephine Baker, and Their Friends
- By: Mary McAuliffe
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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When Paris Sizzled vividly portrays the City of Light during the fabulous 1920s, les Annees folles, when Parisians emerged from the horrors of war to find that a new world greeted them - one that reverberated with the hard metallic clang of the assembly line, the roar of automobiles, and the beat of jazz. Mary McAuliffe traces a decade that saw seismic change on almost every front, from art and architecture to music, literature, fashion, entertainment, transportation, and, most notably, behavior.
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Informative, but no sizzle
- By OzEnigma on 06-01-17
By: Mary McAuliffe
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The Unfinished Palazzo
- By: Judith Mackrell
- Narrated by: Julia Franklin
- Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Commissioned in 1750, the Palazzo Venier was planned as a testimony to the power and wealth of a great Venetian family, but the fortunes of the Venier family waned, and the project was left abandoned and unfinished. Yet in the early 20th century, it attracted three fascinating women: Luisa Casati, Doris Castlerosse and Peggy Guggenheim.
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Nostalgia At Its Best
- By Dan on 01-09-18
By: Judith Mackrell
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Empire of Self
- A Life of Gore Vidal
- By: Jay Parini
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 16 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The product of 30 years of friendship and conversation, Jay Parini's Empire of Self probes behind the glittering surface of Gore Vidal's colorful life to reveal the complex emotional and sexual truth underlying his celebrity-strewn life. But there is plenty of glittering surface as well - a virtual who's who of the American Century, from Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart through the Kennedys, Princess Margaret, and the creme de la creme of Hollywood.
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Well done!
- By Christopher on 03-22-16
By: Jay Parini
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Emily Post
- Daughter of the Gilded Age, Mistress of American Manners
- By: Laura Claridge
- Narrated by: Christine Williams
- Length: 18 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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From the excesses of the late 19th-century Gilded Age, through the horrors of World War I, to the transformations of the Roaring 20s that gave birth to her magisterial Etiquette, Emily Post unfailingly took the measure of her era. A Baltimore blue blood with a populist heart, she helped the masses live the American dream with her hugely popular book, which has been continuously in print for over 85 years.
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Typical for Emily Post
- By Stephanie on 01-07-19
By: Laura Claridge
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The Club
- Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age
- By: Leo Damrosch
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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In 1763, the painter Joshua Reynolds proposed to his friend Samuel Johnson that they invite a few friends to join them every Friday at the Turk's Head Tavern in London to dine, drink, and talk until midnight. Eventually, the group came to include among its members Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, and James Boswell. It was known simply as "the Club". In this captivating audiobook, Leo Damrosch brings alive a brilliant, competitive, and eccentric cast of characters.
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Wonderful survey
- By Tad Davis on 05-10-19
By: Leo Damrosch
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The Sisters
- The Saga of the Mitford Family
- By: Mary S. Lovell
- Narrated by: Annie Wauters
- Length: 18 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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This is the story of a close, loving family splintered by the violent ideologies of Europe between the wars. Jessica was a Communist; Debo became the Duchess of Devonshire; Nancy was one of the best-selling novelists of her day; the ethereally beautiful Diana was the most hated woman in England; and Unity Valkyrie, born in Swastika, Alaska, would become obsessed with Adolf Hitler.
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Great story, terrible reader
- By Victoria on 02-27-14
By: Mary S. Lovell
What listeners say about Edith Wharton
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Anonymous User
- 04-27-24
Well researched, narrator has good voice. Only...
Don't buy from Audible if you can avoid it. Books that are in public domain, that non profit librovox has volunteers record and then makes available for FREE to public, Jeff Bezos has on audible for SALE. profiteering off others voluntary efforts. Bezos doesn't know what the word volunteer means. IF he cared, he could employ adequate staff to monitor that this doesn't happen. No ethics. Check before you buy any public domain books from audible or Amazon, including Wharton, H James, other classics. I wish this book wasn't abridged, but unabridged doesn't seem to be available.
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- Kimball Smith
- 12-06-18
Hermione Lee's Edith Wharton
Brilliant! So enjoyable. I'll read the book now in its entirety. What a real pleasure.
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- Amazon Customer
- 01-23-23
Fascinating Life
I really enjoyed this biography, even though I have next to nothing in common with Wharton. You have to admire Wharton's love of gardens, her high standards, her organizational skills, insatiable reading of books, her devotion to France during the war. At the same time, the author does not shy away from her subject's anti-semitism and racism - which I think a lot of other biographers deliberately stay clear of. I really appreciated how the author deals with Wharton's inability to appreciate the next generation of writers. It will spur me to read more of Wharton's books, and watch the movie adaptations.
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1 person found this helpful
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- An Amazonian
- 06-30-22
Abridgement is rough
This is a heavily abridged version of Lee's 800-page biography. Sometimes the abridgement is rough--once I got confused about where we were.
The reader does a very nice job; her French accent is very good (Wharton was fluent in French and lived in Paris for the last decades of her life, so there are many French passages in her letters.)
Lee is a brilliant biographer, famous for her work on Virginia Woolf. This biography got more mixed reviews, though I'm not sure why. I haven't read Lee's Woolf biography, but I've read her very first book which walks through all of Woolf's novels in order, and it is splendid. (That book is harder to find now; it's from back in the 70s.)
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2 people found this helpful
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- C. Lyon
- 07-29-16
I thought I knew Edith Wharton before . . .
wonderfully indepth and well-rounded perspective of a woman we tend to think of as single faceted. Her life was much more than I had ever imagined it to be. I will go back and read her works with.a much deeper appreciation of the real woman behind the words.
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- Aaron Elliott
- 04-26-07
Gardens Over Great Novels
Edith Wharton admirers will enjoy this biography. My only regret is history of her greatest novels were overshadowed by gardening plans, relationships with architects/designers and her war work. These are all part of her make-up but not what make her a dynamic and vital writer of the human condition as it thwarts itself against class and station. I was looking forward to a feast and was moderately happy with a tasty sandwich.
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17 people found this helpful
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- Chris
- 07-20-09
Abridged version favors life over works
As an abridgment this isn't bad, but other reviewers have complained that this version focuses on gardens instead of Wharton's works. That's true, but it seems to have been a conscious decision to give a more rounded picture of Wharton than another retelling of Ethan Frome might have done. Lee's biography is huge (800+ pages) but well worth reading in full fpr those whose interest is piqued by this version.
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8 people found this helpful
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- Interested Party
- 08-06-22
Pronunciation
Incredibly, the reader - starting in Chapter 2 - mispronounces the word “library” - two times in the same sentence. And in at least one other occasion. She says “libary.” Incredibly annoying!
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- Michael Cochran
- 02-19-21
Reads like a text book.
One of the driest narratives, both in text and the reading, I've ever listened to. No passion or sympathetic prose .
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- Cariola
- 10-25-07
Who Knew . . . ?
that Wharton's life would make such a snoozer? Sure, I knew she had roots in New York society; but I had no idea she was a Francophiliac snob, a racist, and an antisemite. I've enjoyed her novels over the years, and I had looked forward to learning more about her from this book. Unfortunately, what I learned made me dislike her. The book is unevenly paced, flying across Wharton's family history, childhood, and early married years, then spending what seemed like ages on her gardening and French pretentions. Most irritating were the extended passages from the journals she kept while in France--read in French, without translations. My advice is to read the Wharton classics and skip the bio.
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10 people found this helpful