Edith Wharton's Library: A Catalogue

Printed in an edition limited to 350 numbered copies. Issued as Catalogue 12 by Stone Trough Books. Foreword by Hermione Lee, a biographer of Willa Cather and Virginia Woolf. The introduction tells the history of Edith Wharton's books and how George Ramsden came to acquire them. The catalogue gives an invaluably detailed description of this extraordinary library. Every title is annotated with an account of the book's provenance and appearance, identification of the donor, annotations, and connections, where possible, to Wharton's own work or to references in her letters. An indispensable aid to Wharton scholarship, and a vivid commentary on a library of vast cultural range. "Edith Wharton 1862-1937 was a person of great, sustained, informed passions: for friends, travel. architecture, gardens, France, Italy, and above all for books...She took refuge from a difficult marriage in books...she built her friendships on conversations about and exchanges of books. Many of her books are gifts from other writers, from family, friends and admirers" foreword . Illustrated with 30 photographs, including several views of library/drawing rooms in her various homes. "Whenever I try to recall my childhood it is in my father's library that it comes to life. I am squatting on the thick Turkey rug, pulling open one after another the glass doors of the low bookcases, and dragging out book after book in a secret ecstasy of communion" A Backward Glance, p. 69 . xxx, iv , 153, 3 pages. red cloth with gilt-stamped lettering. 8vo..