Generations of authors, performers, and artists have been drawn to Edith Wharton’s writing as a source of inspiration. New to our 2024 programming lineup, this series of talks explores exciting recent adaptations–on the page and for the stage. 

Mariah Fredericks, author of The Lindbergh Nanny (2022), returns to The Mount to discuss her new novel, which casts Edith Wharton as the protagonist in a Gilded Age murder mystery. Inspired by a true story, The Wharton Plot (2024) centers on the murder of David Graham Phillips–a novelist with often notorious ideas about society and women’s place in it–who was shot outside New York’s Princeton Club in 1911. Fredericks’s imaginative take follows Wharton through the fading years of the Gilded Age in a city she once loved so well, telling a taut tale of fame, love, and murder. 

"If you can’t get enough of the cosseted and corseted high-society women showcased in Max’s The Gilded Age, this mystery, set in 1911, when this era of opulent wealth and waste was in its death throes, will have you yearning for a time machine... Come to this novel for the engrossing mystery, stay for the cinematic portrait of an aging woman who fears her popularity is waning and whose marriage is dissolving, even as she’s struggling with feeling obsolete in a modernizing world.”

- Oprah Daily

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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. The Mount's Health and Safety Guidelines can be found here.