Update: Project Gutenberg Wharton link; Literature Lovers Take Note! GH at Edith Wharton's House Wednesday, 9/8C...

Update: Here is the link to the Project Gutenberg works of Edith Wharton. These are free downloads of literary works which have passed into the Public Domain.

Here is the link to Wharton’s, Tales of Men and Ghosts

Project Gutenberg is also in our Blogroll..audio files are also available for many works on the site…

Oh Kewlin’!

The Mount from the Walled Garden

The home of a giant in American Literature, Edith Wharton, is the setting for this Wednesday’s GH…

Discover what the experienced crew of the popular SCIFI Channel television show, Ghosthunters, finds out about the mysteries of The Mount on the March 25, 2009 episode of their new season.

Then come, experience for yourself the hot spots of paranormal activity in the servants’ quarters, stables, and formal rooms on one of our special ghost tours. Call (413) 551-5111 for more information…

Edith Wharton, publicity shot, c. 1905. Edith Wharton Collection, Beinecke Library, Yale University.

The Mount:

History

The Mount has stood mute witness to stormy emotional currents from its very beginnings. Built in 1902 as a writer’s retreat, it was the scene of the final disintegration of the Whartons’ ill-fated marriage. Edith Wharton exiled herself to France and embarked on a passionate, yet angst-ridden love affair, and Teddy Wharton descended into years of mental instability.

Sold by the Whartons in 1911, The Mount became part of Foxhollow School for Girls in 1942. Residents reported unexplained noises and odd sensations while living in the old servant and family quarters. The school closed in 1976 and after several years of neglect Shakespeare & Co. used The Mount as both dormitory and theater. Actors reported not only odd noises, but also visions of figures in old-fashioned clothing calmly inquiring what they were doing there …

The Mount's flower garden early morning. Photograph by David Dashiell

Ghost Stories

Edith Wharton was no stranger to the world of the supernatural. As a girl she was inordinately sensitive to forces she could never quite see nor escape. She was “haunted by formless horrors” and felt “some dark undefinable menace … I could feel it behind me, upon me; and if there was any delay in the opening of the door I was seized by a choking agony of terror.”

Even as a married woman in her late twenties, she could not sleep in a room with a book containing a ghost story. She said she actually burned books containing ghost stories “because it frightened me to know that they were downstairs in the library!” Years later, after writing many ghost stories of her own she perhaps drew on these early fears when describing what makes a good ghost story:

“If it sends a cold shiver down one’s spine, it has done its job and done it well.”

Find out if Edith Wharton and her beloved house can still make spines shiver.

Come to The Mount.

Video courtesy of bengarver

Edith Wharton’s Lenox, Ma. estate, The Mount, will be the setting for an episode of “Ghost Hunter.” The mansion has been the center of numerous ghost stories over the years. For more on the story, Visit www.berkshireeagle.com

Books by Edith Wharton:

Architecture, Decoration, Design & Travel

• The Decoration of Houses (1897, co-authored with Ogden Codman, Jr.)
• The Cruise of the Vanadis (written in 1888, posthumously published in 1991)
• Italian Backgrounds (1905)
• Italian Villas and Their Gardens (1904)
• French Ways and Their Meaning (1919)
• A Motor-Flight Through France (1908)
• Edith Wharton’s Travel Writing: The Making of a Connoisseur (1997)
  Edited by Sarah Bird Wright

Fiction

• The Age of Innocence (1920)
• The Buccaneers (1938, unfinished novel, posthumously published)
• The Children (1928)
• The Custom of The Country (1913)
• Ethan Frome (1911)
• Fast & Loose and The Buccaneers (out of print)
• The Fruit of the Tree (1907)
• The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton (1937)
• The Glimpses of the Moon (1922)
• The House of Mirth (1905)
• Hudson River Bracketed (1929)
• Madame de Treymes & Three Other Novellas (1907)
• The Mother’s Recompense (1925)
• Old New York (1924)
• The Reef (1912)
• Roman Fever & Other Stories (1987)
• A Son at the Front (1923)
• Summer (1917)
• Twilight Sleep (1927)
• Wharton’s New England, Edited by Barbara A. White (out of print)

Collections

• Collected Stories
  1891-1910 Vol. 1
  Edited by Maureen Howard
• Collected Stories
  1911-1937
  Edited by Maureen Howard
• Henry James Novels
  1881-1886
• Novels
  Edited by R.W.B. Lewis
• Novellas and Other Writings
  Edited by Cynthia Griffin Wolff

Non-Fiction

• A Backward Glance (1934)
• Edith Wharton Abroad: Selected Travel Writings
• The Letters of Edith Wharton (out of print)
• The Age of Innocence Shooting Script (out of print)
• Yrs, Ever Affly: The Correspondence of Edith Wharton and Louis Bromfield
  Edited by Daniel Bratton (2000)

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