2 Plunkett St
Lenox, MA 01240
USA
Winter Book Club 
Join us for lively discussions of Edith Wharton’s acclaimed works in the Drawing Room at The Mount. This year we have selected Old New York, In Morocco, and The Age of Innocence. Light refreshments provided. Free for members, $5 for non-members.
Old New York
December 8 at 4 p.m., The Mount Drawing Room
Old New York (1924) is a collection of four novellas by Edith Wharton, revolving around upper-class New York City society in the 1840s, 1850s, 1860s, and 1870s. The decades indicated in the subtitles to the stories make them prequels, after a fashion, to The Age of Innocence. All five might as well be cut from the same bolt of cloth, sharing settings, characters, social insight, a similar knowing eye for a telling detail, and the occasional prop (a canary coach, an ormolu clock).
In Morocco
Published in Scribner’s in 1920, the book is an account of Edith Wharton’s visit to the French colony, perhaps the worst of the war years. In the summer of 1917, Wharton leapt at an unexpected opportunity to visit French Morocco, France’s fledgling colony in North Africa. In need of income, she convinced Scribner’s, her publisher, to let her write about the trip. The result was In Morocco, part travelogue, part exploration of the lives of Moroccan women, and part precolonial tract.
The Age of Innocence
February 9 at 4 p.m., The Mount Drawing Room
The Age of Innocence was Edith Wharton’s twelfth novel, initially serialized in 1920 in four parts, in the magazine Pictorial Review. Later that year, it was released as a book by D. Appleton & Company. It won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, making Wharton the first woman to win the prize. Though the committee had initially agreed to give the award to Sinclair Lewis for Main Street, the judges, in rejecting his book on political grounds, “established Wharton as the American ‘First Lady of Letters’. The story is set in the 1870s, in upper-class, “Gilded-Age” New York City.
Space is limited and pre-registration is strongly encouraged. Register here
The Mount is a Massachusetts Cultural Council UP designated organization welcoming participants of all disabilities. Please contact The Mount at 413-551-5100 or by email, info@edithwharton.org, to discuss accommodations needed to participate fully in this event. Caregivers are admitted free-of-charge.
