The Mount acquires rare first edition by Edith Wharton

Lenox, Mass. (July 12, 2005) --

The Mount announces a uniquely significant acquisition: a first edition of Artemis to Actaeon, by Edith Wharton. This 1909 book was inspired by and belonged to the author’s lover Morton Fullerton. In addition to a personal inscription, the slim volume of poetry also includes a hand written unpublished poem by Wharton to Fullerton inserted within.  

By 1909, Edith Wharton was an accomplished author of several novels as well as numerous works of short fiction and nonfiction, including The Decoration of Houses (1897), co-authored with architect Ogden Codman, Italian Villas And Their Gardens (1904), The House of Mirth (1905), and A Motor-Flight Through France (1907).  She and her husband Edward “Teddy” Wharton usually spent several months in Paris each winter after their habitual residence at The Mount each summer and fall.  It was in Paris in 1907 that Mrs. Wharton met the American journalist William Morton Fullerton, and shortly thereafter he helped to secure a publisher for the French edition of The House of Mirth. 

Their relationship blossomed into romance while he was visiting The Mount the following fall.  During a motoring trip in the Berkshires together, Fullerton gave Wharton a sprig of witch hazel, a symbol of late bloom in life, which was flourishing in spite of an early snowfall.  When he enclosed another sprig in his thank-you note to her, the forty-six-year-old Wharton took it as a sign that Fullerton was interested in a romantic relationship with her.

Wharton’s affair with Fullerton, which lasted more than two years, was a momentous experience for her.  She had never previously known romantic love (nor, some biographers speculate, physical intimacy), and she chronicled her emotional awakening by writing many of the poems were eventually published in Artemis to Actaeon.  The poem ‘Life,’ for instance, was written in celebration of her new perspective:  ‘lift me to thy lips, Life, and once more/ Pour the wild music gathered lore--/ The great refusals and the long disdains, / The stubborn questing for a phantom shore, / The sleepless hopes and memorable pains,/ And all mortality’s immortal gains?’”

The copy of Artemis to Actaeon recently acquired by The Mount was given by Wharton to Fullerton in the month of its publication as a commemoration of their relationship.  It is inscribed at the front free endpaper:  “W.M. F./ From E.W./ April 1909.”  Following the inscription is a previously-unknown and unpublished poem written in his honor that compares the book’s contents to migrating birds and asks “…let them fold their happy wings/ One wondering moment in your breast.”

The Mount’s growing archives include a large collection of editions of Edith Wharton’s works, as well as other related books and manuscripts by and about Wharton.  Purchased in honor of R. Jean Taylor with funds donated in part by Anne G. Fredericks, Dr. Josephine Murray, Mr. and Mrs. John L. Hawkes, and E. Wharton & Co., this copy of Artemis to Actaeon adds great significance to the collection.

For more information on visiting The Mount, including details on 2005 exhibitions and programs, visit www.EdithWharton.org or call (413) 637-1899.

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Downloadable, high-resolution photos and more information available on request.

Contact:

Susan Wissler

Vice President

Edith Wharton Restoration, Inc.

413-637-1899 ext. 103

swissler@edithwharton.org