Edith Wharton's 150th Anniversary

Edith Wharton was a famous and gifted American writer and the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Some of her most famous writings were THE AGE OF INNOCENCE, ETHAN FROME and THE HOUSE OF MIRTH. Edith loved art, science, architecture, design and gardens. She traveled extensively and lived in many different countries. She was really a character. I would have loved to have known her. Her concise observations of human nature were things she wrote about...and the pursuit of happiness. From time to time, I think about this piece she wrote. It haunts me.

"I have sometimes thought that a woman's nature is like a great house full of rooms. There is the hall, through which everyone passes in going in and out; the drawing room, where one receives formal visits; the sitting room, where members of the family come and go as they list. But beyond that, far beyond, are other rooms, the handles to whose doors perhaps are never turned: no one knows the way to them; no one knows whither they lead; and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes."


Previously posted in 2010