' ... when Arnold Bennett was reading Mrs [Edith] Wharton's "The House of Mirth" (1905), he concluded: "It can just be read. Probably a somewhat superior Mrs Humphry Ward".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'As a ?1-a-week warehouse clerk in the early 1920s, H.E. Bates spent most of the workday with Conrad, Hardy, Wells, Bennett, Galsworthy, Edith Wharton and Willa Cather'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Herbert Ernest Bates Print: Book
[L.M. Montgomery] 'read a great deal; she mentions fifty different authors in her journal which covers the years 1910 to 1921. Titles range from Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" to Beatrix Potter's "Peter Rabbit" and Thackeray's "Vanity Fair". She also read many female writers, such as George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, Edith Wharton and Olive Schreiner'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Maud Montgomery Print: Book
Henry James, in letter to Edith Wharton of 17 August 1902, writes to her of 'lately having read "The Valley of Decision", read it with such high appreciation and received so deep an impression from it that I can scarce tell you why, all these weeks, I have waited for any other pretext to write.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Henry James to Edith Wharton, 8 February 1905: '[...] your good letter has found me on the very point of writing to you [...] For I have read the February morsel of "The House of Mirth", with such a sense of its compact fulness, vivid picture and "sustained interest" as to make me really wish to celebrate the emotion.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Serial / periodical
Henry James to Edith Wharton, 8 November 1905, in praise of the conclusion to "The House of Mirth": 'Half an hour ago, or less, I laid down the November "Scribner" [...] Let me tell you at once that I very much admire that fiction'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Serial / periodical
Henry James to Edith Wharton, 24 November 1907: 'I have read "The Fruit [of the Tree", in copy sent by Wharton][...] with acute appreciation -- the liveliest admiration and sympathy.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Henry James to Edith Wharton, 4 December 1912, whilst suffering from shingles: 'Your beautiful Book ["The Reef: A Novel"] has been my portion these several days [...] it has been a real lift to read you and taste you and ponder you: the experience has literally worked [...] in a medicating sense that neither my local nor my London Doctor [...] shall have come within miles and miles of'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
'I'm reading "A Son at the Front" in book form. The wife reads serials in magazines which I don't.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rudyard Kipling Print: Book
Virginia Woolf to Ethel Smyth, 21 May 1934:
'I lit the fire and read Mrs Wharton; Memoirs and she knew Mrs Hunter [Ethel's sister], and
probably you. Please tell me some time what you thought of her. Theres the shell of a
distinguished mind; I like the way she places colour in her sentences, but I vaguely surmise
that theres something you hated and loathed in her.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
E. M. Forster to Jessica Darling, 6 February 1912:
'Before I get off books, I will put down the names of one or two that I have enjoyed lately. George Moore, Ave, William James, Memories & Studies, G. L. Strachey, Landmarks in French Literature (price 1/-, and oh so good), J. T. Sheppard, Greek Tragedy (also 1/-; Malcolm [Darling] knows him), Foemina, L'Ame des Anglais, Andre Chevrillon, Dans L'Inde, Forrest Reid, The Bracknels, Lascelles Abercrombie, Emblems of Love, Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
'I have just read a very bad book by Edith Wharton & am cross with it for being bad because I thougt she never [underlined] was [end underlining].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Esther Gwendolyn, 'Stella' Bowen Print: Book
'The first 60 pages [of "Summer"] might well have been written with one of those quill feathers one finds lying on a quiet field on a hot brooding summer day.' [Hence follow two paragraphs of appreciative comment.]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'I haven't quite finished Mrs Wharton. It's very good and readable as she always is I think. It was a great solace to me on the way. Also I had a volume of poems by Rupert Brooke which interested me. The man's a poet and sometimes touches a searching string. It was nice to wake up this morning and see the sun shining on the olive trees.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
