From Cheryl Miller's Claremont review of Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee (h/t, No Left Turns):
Edith Wharton, the massive new biography by Oxford English professor Hermione Lee, is the story of success: how Lee's formidable heroine survived a painful childhood, a disastrous marriage, an only slightly less disastrous love affair, repeated bouts of depression and illness, and the German occupation. Through it all, Wharton remained unflappable. Just two months before her death, she paid a visit to a friend and collaborator, the architect Ogden Codman, to discuss a new edition of their The Decoration of Houses- (one of Wharton's 48 books). "Everyone was on jump all the time," Codman complained of his frail but nevertheless commanding guest. Only a few days after she arrived, Wharton suffered a heart attack. As she was carried into the ambulance, she admonished her host: "This will teach you not to ask decrepit old ladies to stay."
Read the whole thing.
You can visit Wharton's recently-restored Berkshire home and gardens, "The Mount," in lovely and civilized Lenox, MA. Been there. It's not too far from Maggie's Farm. A friend helped raise the money for the restoration, and they did a good job with it. They duplicated her formal garden designs.
