Pritchett on Wharton: "...the accountant-historian of the smart set ..."
Autograph Manuscript of his review of Edith Wharton's autobiography (A Backward Glance), entitled "A Fiend for Destiny"
[Northampton, Mass: 1972].
Price: $850.00
About the item
3-1/2 pp. 1 vols. 4to. Pritchett on Wharton: "...the accountant-historian of the smart set ..." With numerous deletions and corrections; small chip from top of first page, else very good; accompanied by a retained copy of the typescript (also with a few corrections), with his name and address typed at the upper right corner.
Item #59956
A sharp, brilliant, and often funny sketch of Wharton and her set and her art, published in the New Statesman, 22 December 1972. Pritchett does not wonder that Wharton's autobiography was not accepted by English publishers in 1937 ("The dropped names lie like anonymous confetti on the pavement no longer clean..."); he acknowledges that the book however has some merit when her best three books are re-examined -- Ethan Frome, The House of Mirth, and The Age of Innocence ("...excellent works of knuckle-rapping second rank"), and he wonders how "a woman so well off and who hardly ever met people who were not, a woman so restlessly and exclusively mondaine, manage to become an artist?..." With some very funny passing remarks on Henry James as well.
