Literary Sites: The Mount, Edith Wharton's Home - Lenox, MA

The Mount

Edith Wharton's Home (1902 -1911)

Lenox, MA

GPS: N42° 19.859; W073° 16.911

Short Description: 

The Mount, the home of Edith Wharton from 1902 to 1911 is located at 2 Plunkett Street in Lenox, MA.

Dolphin Fountain

Bedroom

Dining Room

Library

Living Room

Long Description:

Edith Jones was born into the privileged world of New York society on January 24, 1862 to George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander of New York City. At the age of 10 she gained access to her father's extensive library. This began her interest in the world of literature. She was highly regarded for her books on gardens and design, but most well known for her works of fiction.

In 1885, she married Edward Robbins Wharton. In 1902, she built The Mount, a 113 acre estate in Lenox, Massachusetts, which expresses her principles of garden and interior design. She lived at the Mount from 1902 until she moved to France in 1911. During her years at the Mount she wrote some of her most famous novels including Sanctuary (1903), The Fruit of the Trees (1907) along with the bestselling novels House of Mirth (1905) and the classic Ethan Frome (1911).

During her life Edith Wharton wrote over 40 books, including novels, short stories, poetry travel, architecture, garden and interior design. She was the first woman to be awarded the Pulitizer Prize in Literature for her 1921 novel The Age of Innocence and the first woman to be awarded an honorary doctor of letters from Yale University.

Edith Wharton died of a stroke on August 11, 1937 in Le Pavillon Colombe, her 18th-century house on Rue de Montmorency in Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt (now rue Edith Wharton). She is interred in the American Cemetery in Versailles, France.

The following is a listing of her works from Wikipedia (q.v.)

Novels:

The Touchstone, 1900
The Valley of Decision, 1902
Sanctuary, 1903
The House of Mirth, 1905
Madame de Treymes, 1907
The Fruit of the Tree, 1907
Ethan Frome, 1911
The Reef, 1912
The Custom of the Country, 1913
Summer, 1917
The Marne, 1918
The Age of Innocence, 1920 (Pulitzer Prize winner)
The Glimpses of the Moon, 1922
A Son at the Front, 1923
Old New York, 1924
The Spark (The 'Sixties), 1924
The Mother's Recompense, 1925
Twilight Sleep, 1927
The Children, 1928
Hudson River Bracketed, 1929
The Gods Arrive, 1932
The Buccaneers, 1938
Fast and Loose, 1938 (first novel, written in 1876–1877)

Poetry:

Poetry Verses, 1878
Artemis to Actaeon and Other Verse, 1909
Twelve Poems, 1926

Short story collections:

The Greater Inclination, 1899
Souls Belated, 1899
Crucial Instances, 1901
The Reckoning, 1902
The Descent of Man and Other Stories, 1903
The Other Two, 1904
The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories, 1908
Tales of Men and Ghosts, 1910
Xingu and Other Stories, 1916
Old New York, 1924
Here and Beyond, 1926
Certain People, 1930
Human Nature, 1933
The World Over, 1936
Ghosts, 1937
Roman Fever, 1934
"The Angel at the Grave"

Non-fiction:

The Decoration of Houses, 1897
Italian Villas and Their Gardens, 1904
Italian Backgrounds, 1905
A Motor-Flight Through France, 1908 (travel)
France, from Dunkerque to Belfort, 1915 (war)
French Ways and Their Meaning, 1919
In Morocco, 1920 (travel)
The Writing of Fiction, 1925 (essays on writing)
A Backward Glance, 1934 (autobiography)
As editor The Book of the Homeless, 1916
Edith Wharton died of a stroke on August 11, 1937 in Le Pavillon Colombe, her 18th-century house on Rue de Montmorency in Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt (now rue Edith Wharton). She is interred in the American Cemetery in Versailles, France.