Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    A Backward Glance
    A Backward Glance
    A Backward Glance
    Ebook347 pages6 hours

    A Backward Glance

    By Edith Wharton

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Edith Wharton was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928 and 1930. Wharton combined her insider's view of America's privileged classes with a brilliant, natural wit to write humorous, incisive novels of social and psychological insight. She was also well acquainted with many of her era's other literary and public figures, including Theodore Roosevelt.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublishereBookIt.com
    Release dateFeb 8, 2021
    ISBN9781456636807
    A Backward Glance
    Author

    Edith Wharton

    Edith Wharton (1862–1937) was an American novelist—the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Age of Innocence in 1921—as well as a short story writer, playwright, designer, reporter, and poet. Her other works include Ethan Frome, The House of Mirth, and Roman Fever and Other Stories. Born into one of New York’s elite families, she drew upon her knowledge of upper-class aristocracy to realistically portray the lives and morals of the Gilded Age.

    Read more from Edith Wharton

    Related to A Backward Glance

    Related ebooks

    Literary Biographies For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Apparition

      Mar 26, 2020

      Apparition
      8 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Jason R Jimenez

      Dec 10, 2019

      Can you imagine a world without frogs? Or even less of them? What is the night without a symphony of croaks? I want to ask that to everyone. The post A Year in Reading: Jason R Jimenez appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      Flood The World With Beauty

      Nov 1, 2019

      A big literary conference is probably not the best place for a poet dealing with a mental breakdown. But there I was at AWP, skittishly perusing tables at the book fair, under the garish lights of the Minneapolis Convention Center. For two years, par

      8 min read

    • Article

      An Apprenticeship

      Dec 1, 2021

      An Apprenticeship
      39 min read

    • Article

      The Reader

      May 1, 2020

      The Reader
      5 min read

    • Article

      Worlds Of Ink And Paper

      Nov 22, 2022

      As a young girl, I still remember my dear mother, smile on her face, curled up with Family Circle magazine in her lap. She was engrossed in an article titled “Butternut Wisdom,” written by Gladys Taber. At my age, it didn’t mean a thing to me. But as

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Courage To Be Happy

      Feb 1, 2023

      MARRIAGE and columns have this in common: you tend to repeat yourself. More than once in these pages, I have quoted the New Yorker’s legendary film critic Pauline Kael. After President Nixon’s landslide victory in 1972 she wrote: ‘I live in a rather

      3 min read

    • Article

      Reading in English

      Jul 7, 2020

      Reading in English
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Art Of The Beachcomber

      May 12, 2023

      Research isn’t just for acquiring knowledge—it’s creatively generative, too The post The Art of the Beachcomber appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    • Article

      ‘Call yourself English?’

      Aug 21, 2019

      ‘Call yourself English?’
      19 min read

    • Article

      The Allure of Messy Reddit Stories

      Mar 19, 2023

      Jerusalem Demsas’s culture and entertainment picks include Children of Time, Vampire Weekend, and chasing down stories people tell—or make up—on Reddit.

      6 min read

    • Article

      Ghost Girl, Banana

      Aug 21, 2023

      By the time I was 25, there were only two things I remembered about Mumma. The first was that she smelled of watermelons, the second was that we were happy. We’d taken our father’s name of course, but a name is only half a story. The other half exist

      6 min read

    • Article

      In The Garden Of The Fugitives

      May 18, 2018

      In The Garden Of The Fugitives
      24 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for A Backward Glance

    4/5

    38 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      I found this book in the mailroom in my building, and even though I read Ethan Frome in high school and loathed it, I was a little bit curious about Edith Wharton, whose American home "The Mount" in Lenox, MA I had toured. At first I was put off by her privileged childhood, and not sure the book was worth the time. I persevered, and was rewarded. Her writing is so clear, obvious from her rendering of her writing process, description of many friends, and life in New York, Lenox, England and France.I went through the book with a heavy highlighter. I learned that in her New York social circle, leisure was the expected occupation, and her family and friends never mentioned any of her writings, as if it was an embarrassment. Nor did they discuss anyone else's books. They were not readers at all, and she was quite an anomaly.Her family was so disturbed at her bookishness that they scheduled her debut at 17. After she married, at 23, she and her husband began to travel, and Edith found her own society. She discusses her writing process in the chapter "Secret Garden." Although I don't write fiction, I have always been curious about how different writers do it, and her description was fascinating. There is a chapter about Henry James, a lifelong friend of hers. She has a great admiration for him and his writing, but in describing some of his interactions with others, she revealed him as a rather nasty critic who could dish it out but couldn't take it himself, though she doesn't seem to see it that way. To me, who has enjoyed several of his books, he seems a rather petty and particular old bachelor. During WWI, she was living in France, and very involved in supporting the war effort. I would have liked to read more about that. It surprised me that her most famous and popular novel, The Age of Innocence, was written after the end of the war, in a period when she was recuperating from the effects of living through the war. The Age of Innocence was set in an old New York of her youth, a world that no longer existed. Perhaps time and distance had distilled that world for her, perhaps looking back shielded her from thinking about the horrors of the war in France. And now I am eager to read some of her novels.
    • 3/5
      don't quite know what to say about this. almost nothing about her personal life which one usually expects a memoir to be about. lots of travelling, friends--mostly men. i don't really enjoy wharton's fiction so why would i enjoy this? this book is not in any of the memoir books i have???
    • 4/5
      This is more of a literary memoir than an autobiography, although definitely worthy of a read by anyone who enjoys Wharton's fiction. The book traces the earliest beginnings of young Edith's desire to create stories and goes on to describe her growing friendships with other authors, extensive travels, active social life, and publication successes. Wharton has a wealth of anecdotes about her friends and acquaintances, but little to say about herself or her personal life. Her husband is mentioned in no more than five sentences in the entire book. Not to be missed, however, is a fat section on Henry James in both his middle and older years. The book really ends at World War I. There is some general commentary on the hardships of the war and some complaints about the coarseness of "the modern world," but nothing of any substance.

    Book preview

    A Backward Glance - Edith Wharton

    !`book_preview_excerpt.htmlu}۶Ƶ /=3}9$G۲ndHy,E ƅ?/9Z[CmV\|&./Wuh񿵻{V|/j<NS?0~qCq?iWcӵn_ooꇱ]] XU[|S5OWxʪ=/!c!_cS_MyhC ׺뱑Sj>j`bH}.74zS@¢ƣZp%y320J 6oU? oݦQluħ.(=oU?2ᗐ?,/Ogc}rqkꋒ t!C$mx:W$[dUm졟qmjU!!zbϻqY,yKOU&gFk#g?д.! ml2mt{Pԉ0ATV`1 I-p)U Y)JFCӻUGc1l"| ]wն wW`4S(S" 4T ,4#sI)By9H?m5\|YIy{6k.ϴg)MQaJH <TY𱪟 8̧~ߚ(-ğmj]e cÅ:],g5ZK7S5̋m%)*\Ⱥ +`vnbbFӍy mmQ]{8"e;i:"Z},KX{Fwk7&Z9u`TiT +25t?(<#ٞL …wTM ̞ο`f/Ԁ72!`zcxl#2 r:&Q$.r_jdžǤ F ~Y8Ig&Ÿh2x=u>@@{@ඇx=,qq#(MD-hM Xu0c$ }=X*8{&8y Q'BghФLL$4uZihĮdt?|PáwEHC i!w"4h+|ϹN+S?R= ҹ+^/n0=4iD*(l<hş8) Z.]!R,4@3Ef+l IX԰},ޘrΈg? C]#|OM~T]=+<7(W'B=>JMIEpDJ qMsLv\h:zTl <>Mۣ:`骮HeE(~ 5Yu Y5 ݄vo#@HaǝM]c֖ c9[Mn3 Coq2gAtQ6ꢂR3'='w`y*SY ]g*]=8WWufM%]PPG Pqا%Vd bW|ӸW!J~ #i^44Ӎ44 iV1/0Hiw1LEp~A>5:d#J؛!"A`0"$t䛦.S2ЂR J.SHڍ5Vi}%J1V (޽gD>dam^#y>+^V<g8E֟.|W:L(1W !d^*B4]㵦AV1'S§]Trp@gSnih"w_WWtq5B$ {>ч/+ܒV BDđf9 h$h[AvAtH1eWL7DٛE5Ea2 SO$" 2+(Z#jlhia%ow[ wq>u ]|SФ mDZd ~ :umg%E",y%C/BVp8ȣ6Ma!Q\W4 l  7*AgP .yq 4FHY@U5 nLȆw]rt. w 6Up`VR h-W|dSsx:qn, cwDKxځvPy` #ve|XeWN-{ zg9yȈ,e 3dQή (O3``ta\ ,Y,u1$gp]';\iJu3(hvS9 |-*M݀Ai61vk;$~v(0|1\1tqޜ/./Yh_ MɾW![2<;O]Q=u,B'!z:H%O5T`C1Lv)cD7gɩTb'a#y܌ p&d ,7vKdg\?-aK+3qv9x0z$ NJi3e+6nݱk+f0U(&KD570ߌ͌;Q#p|]G!ʲYRFPb%4. Pb02qe7xŠyшe˳ΞQls66tq雥kOL>GQۂy -i84jDaFnqBy* *^Ywa.}DHx ,UVt.M1&EU&EłH+ O!dX NbD҇=$kC0L,jKܗ e]vc!#k+TԅQ-ܡ󁹐A:ߚzW[m9GA\2%'8⫪ۼruTBlLBWyb[Xp Scvyҹ3M3gZbUTslY3s)N*!EL*}XWypvm%idxUYLdy=Ao`=48'(k\d>1,q,͆Dz/D beN5G$3x<9jvhު/*~纾 &0SV@: ?h5eIi}C89VJ]z+8%O룂0ױkm0_ )(,-w7^DhnBPo 5yqfWbyYjTGI`r] 'Uj!?{1dr*ByLWZ,NPI6ص>IUQ‘84bGVO1w? w"-j=p}.GC|yDT+5yn,rw7؆``) hds@[N~ `ً8c:[ٿ'4ރnb1Dvw 82ϸKƞ'J-wKoKYjFɶXdeBS!] RqUY/ddpZRaxQ?H|I4K0.6=j?H;e3p|:ZuεlR ӌ̅$fNr TaXArVapV<aEKk;o"0z,|oWԯmЕ**lcpOpI2܋-[8񩮆"8J P-&;zdji(e68R ĕ硫T4*xߧe*K%TGV<ۼSﯹΆ%AQ VV'' (sC4{*-N9'}snk=3j4ZAVq.O~&{+Q/y6ʕ .:eT(u)eqY (j1ͬ iDwW%Bfm$7~ncW 9\4ك^/srsE@f>`ַIװpd5εJh0~͠ dM6W.]}~WT+f>_DDTCׯb,}}2ȧ$δ48,$:<(2TE%J%qj] PK%b?t挛WKk$XFܲ gU¼|k/6^P`69 PDHD#3@,Z+TiH=I@Fg<鷮ɇ5CrGgPiNoz)`WعAJʻh84EahC7F(T^VJ 3g^$3x๒{l(7rq eV+@TQ&ݶ7z3h+481z?^ ,~ UGpnvg7+g9`\#D3BvsۺS5,i67cY7?zZ QO"^$"tOދ 6<3bz rVF1֤7^ m,QKS5g?(1έ~Șvz\k.UrP:5s%}%lq )S%jo!gy/zɑr|A6׋Y"B27Tj{PfO1֖S`-c8!xHmǂ7Ykф!Gۆ䌹gh9$Vn3 / Ǟ,MhU foDCje| La }k_JaXT0cj'µ]!d/Cop(;U뚗Y *ZH+9$oS+L-ɏ6 e Oa/gYE?2=O+:+8w*TMU`!{Ҧ Щ]ASs1钂'%w596 <+_SPIlyxΕ[r-zutקhxF]VF,o6Pi6xl2&-DhT9Șts,;X)vj U4͘"WFİչp3߰x8c˾W3"JGT,̫ι>d` !XZ^)Q(Kw5zsGU Bi!o'o[n?x?IUt+^yT}~@ԬTruB80ҠPz Ԅ`P6bj}TWl(cP<`=6Ǣ+BYf?硹>7eҼ[ /0XW!gp갬,*WV(tHGƖo}ayceoc. T"-VaB& .+f!ԓ,Ti[pxxX^x=Fk.6v+i$l'0BBP`LL vU&d,#ԉ|Axm̎~ì3nH,,kQ>uSa9BJ[)ihiNiq>'Vv^]ͧiX\tvTx:{Np0Qk|wˆ3B1T~D T<؇  ݉tA.PërG#}uUOqn2V=ޔNl]3|탷w BGMr;h, p5jLq~nXsv)Y3MElE zZ,[W+KՊ,P~jSfhcquf9dVުM֍_ROHVg鳁볺kj`:ފ[+_X~J/vBi61ƯsG4hF(px:iKUB=K>.-,5oƜ5!\z}X*"&jïH.Q ZZ61lX&~`t1e'Nj'k4 m "4`MQaܒhWj`l6y&ONÃ&V >U4s:G]JZV"-u߆i7#%lSrHWXh%=J42r4QNG{Zk^1Aʾ?qțnnOW+;*S֜ɑwm8'&<ǧ/8=>x'чzgY%+2߀dyH $?)Flqc IGz_V CݲΫU2cG#R Kܾ1&ggf"!~Ҵs76Zh|3yeZ96v1xm9.#ŐT+*m8 @-\B9/jg&ŢWgy4<Ԯ0݈0ڱ!:Qʭa?)i._ ؎>Senx$V8Ov[2֎.OSb-`6-@qvk t:6UG~;mކz|fU̇TM'1TEdXLDy>c!a٧n[| ^!Jys+6cEKhfJMmr"!wWP!"[w U[P< sy&dwBl,|t^ĝ<>SÉ/e9YjU$WI%_mp}c^bmg6>b'ؚfzfM3"aA;fnI`dF` !Ak-|nU$Vvs=mƷS{|SyY ruZ$LZ/mތA0UZ B$Jn`CܴxzFofftNb] pabQ'NuK{ <7aýz/T/qE"M>HՒAi,AV"裰Rh'!'~LBK8J aq-BT=Ğa8A b8ݙL.3Ll̸-}-Y5xpWKd. .7.8x=1WέfbF.˸$]a[bת^%fo@7 ټAEsK^>;)5^05 F,^ˆ̃,~"m!hC(a|ǝ ^3,rkur.x袝dy8hٱՇ#CMPC٘ 6k~1\VApϼi%DfKܚϡ}>t$X7 }{1+m)GO^Zjx) >@30jʃ #s!6fUE08ohS8r5T{_q{vS\$<.BT4Z>͐"_%]*iDLA>r͟r`y Cƒ0Y)eҿi}tL)oiyzN5htEl,F[ ̓z gG?IsnA3=_fxb[R~B,OfMnFIQ&ntvL8<O&KW4q_*(/J̸+^ޘpqնI3 I&0լqKhk_&oi1% Xo ;r%#ZZROqL@9ɫQ6
    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1