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A SPIRITUAL REUNION

THE RECOVERY AND RETURN OF

EDITH WHARTON’S PERSONAL LIBRARY TO THE MOUNT

By Maxine Carter-Lome, publisher

Edith Wharton’s Library
at The Mount
by Eric Limon Photography

December 15, 2005, article for scholars and scholarly tourists to gain a more comprehensive under-
in The New York Times standing of the author. Fans can view the volumes that not only shaped
Aannounced the news that Wharton’s development but read her notes that also reflect on the
Edith Wharton’s personal library broad sweep of her interests, from classical French theater and German
from her summer cottage, The drama to the novels of her peers.
Mount, in Lenox, Massachusetts,
would be returning home after a Designing The Mount, From the Ground Up
century overseas.
In 1902, Edith and Edward
“In an English house in this small (Teddy) Wharton built The
Yorkshire village, a defining moment in Mount on 113 acres in the
American letters unfolded on Monday, Berkshires of Massachusetts as
rounding a circle begun a century ago when
their country home after the
Edith Warton, Edith Wharton, the writer, packed up and young Gilded Age couple grew
American novelist left the United States to live in France. tired of the Newport, MA social
“With a toast of Champagne and a scene. This was Edith Wharton’s
lunch of roast pheasant (shot by the host himself), George Ramsden, a first real home, and she took a
British bookseller in a pinstripe suit, signed a $2.6 million agreement to sell keen interest in the designing
the 2,600-volume Edith Wharton library to the custodians of the Mount, and decorating of the house itself
the writer’s estate in Lenox, Mass., which she designed, built, and finally and its formal gardens, which are
left forever in 1911 as her marriage unraveled.” a full expression of Wharton’s
influential architectural and
The repatriation of the author’s library to The Mount has been landscape theories, as much a
heralded as a spiritual reunion of significant pieces of Wharton’s First Edition copy of The Decoration passion of hers as her writing.
autobiography—her house and her books—and a wonderful opportunity of Houses by Edith Wharton and
Ogden Codman Jr Edith had co-authored a book

24 Journal of Antiques and Collectibles