A lot of American authors started here, in New England. This lends itself to two of my passions: history and literature, specifically "old and boring" literature. We recently visited "The Mount," the home of Edith Wharton in Lenox, MA.
Edith Wharton (1862-1937) produced over 40 books in 40 years, including novels, collections of short stories and poems, and authoritative works on architecture, gardens, interior design, and travel. She was the first woman awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the first woman to receive an honorary doctorate from Yale, and the first woman elevated to full membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Wharton designed and built The Mount and was almost 40 when she moved there in 1902. Five years before, she had published The Decoration of Houses (DoH), in which she and co-author Ogden Codman, Jr. denounced the excesses of Victorian interior decoration and urged a return to the classical virtues of proportion, harmony, and simplicity. The Mount became a laboratory for exploring the principles developed in DoH.
Wharton spent about 10 years living in The Mount, enjoying life in the country, entertaining close friends, and writing productively. She created many of her great works while living there, including The House of Mirth and Ethan Frome. The deterioration of her husband's mental health and their failed marriage forced the sale of The Mount in 1911.
The Mount was acquired by Edith Wharton Restoration in 1997. Some of her beautiful gardens have been recreated as they would have been in her time. Most recently, The Mount acquired Edith Wharton's book collection in 2006 after almost a century in Europe.
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