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Lee is detailed and interesting about the rigid society into which Wharton was born, with its ostracisms and rules. Even the friendships and good works of her later years, a recitation that might have degenerated into a list, Lee somehow makes lively, right down to the details of Wharton's garden-planting.-- Review: An American Original (April 29, 2007).

Hermione Lee, author of "Edith Wharton," will be online to field questions and comments about her latest biography and the life of the novelist who chronicled high society in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Hermione Lee is the author of biographies of other distinguished women writers, including Virginia Woolf and Willa Cather. She is a professor at Oxford University.

Join Book World Live each Tuesday at 3 p.m. ET for a discussion based on a story or review in each Sunday's Book World section.

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Hermione Lee: Hallo. This is Hermione Lee, and I'm looking forward to receiving your questions on Edith Wharton. I'm sitting in my office in Oxford, looking out over the medieval walls of New College on a beautiful spring evening. I'm new to chat rooms and much more used to written or oral interviews, so please bear with me if my answers seem rather formal!

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McGaheysville, Va: Age of Innocence and Ethan Frome are so different in setting and financial situation. How could Wharton know how country folks live?

Hermione Lee: You're right, Ethan Frome, like her great short story "Bunner Sisters", is about the underclass, the underprivileged, the poor and the isolated, not about the rich socialites with whom she is mainly associated. When she was living at The Mount in Lenox she was very aware of the poverty and rural isolation outside the rich enclave of her town. Novels like The Fruit of the Tree, Ethan Frome and Summer (and, come to that, the end of The House of Mirth) show that she is much more preoccupied with the struggles of people with few advantages and opportunities than she has been given credit for.

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Los Angeles,CA: Thanks for taking questions, I'm looking forward to reading your bio being a huge fan of Edith Wharton. I had my book club read it, too--and though they all moaned & groaned when I made the choice, I can tell you it prompted a very lively discussion when we all met after having read the book. Can you share with us what you think "the word which made all clear" is alluding to at the end of the novel? It seems to be the subject of endless speculation.

Hermione Lee: which novels did your club read, you don't say here?

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Washington, DC: Last month I attended the Pen Faulkner series at the Folger Shakespeare Theater. The night's theme was, "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman." One of the authors stated that she did not believe a writer like Edith Wharton would have been able to produce the breadth of work, and consequently the quality of work, that she did if she would have had children. She claimed that because all three of the authors on stage had children that they would never be able to produce the quantity and/or quality of work that an author without children would. What are your thoughts?

Hermione Lee: As with the case of Virginia Woolf (and Jane Austen, and George Eliot, and Willa Cather, and Elizabeth Bowen, many other great women writers) I always feel it's rather condescending when people assume they couldn't have written as they did AND had children. Who are we to say?

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Silver Spring, Md: Would you speak about the friendship between Edith Wharton and Henry James, and what do you think was some of the best advice he gave her?

Hermione Lee: I have a long chapter in my book about the friendship (a chapter called "The Legend"). It is a rich and complicated and not always harmonious relationship. He was 20 years older, he was the maestro and she was the novice when they met, but she outstripped him in fame and money in his lifetime, and he sometimes found her very overdemanding and bossy (he used to call her The Angel of Devastation). On the other hand he was grateful to her for her generosity, he loved travelling in France with her, they shared many interests and intimacies (especially during her mid life love affair) and when she was doing her war work in France in the first world war he greatly admired her and called her a great "generalissima". They were not, however, all that enthusiastic about each others' writing when they knew each other, though she loved his early work.

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Silver Spring, MD.: I am an English Literature graduate of the University of Maryland in 1993 and, perhaps I just took the wrong courses, but in my four years I only had one Wharton book in a class and that was House of Mirth which was taught from a primarily socio-economic standpoint.

And for years on my own as I read Henry James (again, woefully undertaught in my experience) I frequently saw Wharton referred to as some kind of Junior Henry James or the female Henry James.

While there are similarities, more and more, I think that Edith Wharton is the better novelist.

Her character insight is every bit as rich as James' without being overbearing and her pacing is much better.

Is it not time for a critical reassessment of Edith Wharton and not simply as some contemporary of James?

The Reef and Summer should be required reading alongside Portrait of a Lady.

Thanks!

Hermione Lee: I agree with you wholeheartedly about the equal merits of Wharton and James, though I am a fervent James fan too (I don't think this has to be either/or, a bit like Joyce/Woolf!) I spend a lot of time on this in my book, especially in the chapter called "The Legend", which is all about them and their friendship and their literary relationship. Yes, I agree that The Reef (perhaps her most Jamesian book) and Summer are wonderful short novels. Do you know The custom of the Country? My favourite.

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Fair Oaks, VA: Hello. A few observations: I have never understood the Victorian aversion to female intellectualism. Queen Victoria herself was most insistent that any prospective wife for her eldest son must not be "too intellectual". What was the fear? How insulting to the future Queen Alexandra, too.

Also, as a frequent expatriate myself, I know that that status can be very liberating. You can escape your own culture's limitations and do not fit into the host culture's pigeon-holes.

Finally, I think it is unfortunate that Edith Wharton is so often compared to Henry James, usually in a way that suggests she is "almost" as good. I prefer her books. I think James is more apt to tell you what to think about his characters. With Wharton, the reader can judge for herself, based on what the characters do. I guess I see James as using adjectives where Wharton uses verbs! I look forward to reading your book. Thanks for writing it.

Hermione Lee: I think the aversion to intellectualism is very much of a particular class, don't you? Edith W's gilded age family thought young women should be wives, mothers and hostesses.

I agree with you about Wharton and James, though I am a great admirer of his work. So did EW - she got very fed up with being constantly compared with him or described, as one of her early reviewers did, as "a masculine Henry James"! I think she is bolder and tougher about many subjects. And she herself, though she revered and loved him, was very impatient with his late style.

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Herndon, Virginia: I know this might be a tough question since it is so subjective, but what makes Edith Wharton's "The Age of Innocence" such a classic novel?

Hermione Lee: I think, like you, it's one of the great novels of the 20th century. I think it's the extraordinary mixture of cool, brilliant analysis of a history of a country and a society, cross-cut with the intense, passionate, thwarted feelings - not just of the would-be lovers, but of May Archer, too. All the time you are reading it, you feel both near to the characters, and far away from them in time - it's a remarkable technical achievement. I give this novel a whole chapter in my book.

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Baltimore, MD: Were you aware that Dawn Powell -- so much Wharton's opposite in many ways -- was a huge admirer of "The Reef"? There are some wonderful passages in the diaries that express her regard for Wharton's writing, and for that book in particular. Does this surprise you? What do you think of Powell?

Hermione Lee: I'm so sorry, I'm ignorant about Dawn Powell. Please tell me more?

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Houghton Lake, Mich: I liked your book VERY much. Yet, at the end, she seemed very alone. I realize she died abroad but she died without family at her side. Did Edith keep her life with her family off to one side? Thank you for answering my question.

Hermione Lee: Thanks! Yes, I felt she was essentially a lonely person, even though she had so many distinguished, loyal and interesting friends. She regretted her childlessness, I think, and although she made a rich life for herself in France, she was still an exile.

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New York, NY: Dear Ms. Lee,

I happen to be in the middle of "The Custom of the Country," and I am struck by how Wharton appears to be much more sympathetic toward her male characters than her female characters - even as she critques how society works to disadvantage women. Do you agree, and would the events of her own life have informed this perspective? Thanks very much.

Hermione Lee: Yes, particularly in that novel, where Undine Spragg is such a deliciously appalling character - though I do feel for her when she's sitting in that French chateau surrounded by all those terrible old French ladies and wishing she could sell the tapestries off. And Ralph Marvell, by comparison, is so gentle and sensitive. Yet you also feel, don't you, that he's at the end of a dying race, and that she has the more power and energy. I don't feel so warmly towards Lawrence Selden in The House of Mirth, do you?

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St. Simons Island, Ga: Thank your for taking our questions about Ms. Jones (b/k/a Wharton). I am an avid reader of the short story, keep several volumes of short story collections in my den and in my bedroom, and re-read the same (although many) stories. The Journey is one of my favorties. To say it is well-written would be foolish on my part. But the richness of the language is always inspiring. I will re-read the first few paragraphs several times with each visit to this story. My question: What happened to America's writers? It's as if they all died along with the generation born in the 19th century. Sure, today's writers are entertaining, but the depth just isn't the same.

Hermione Lee: Edith Wharton - please don't call her Ms Jones, she would have hated it! - is one of the great short story writers of her time. I recommend "Autres Temps...", "After Holbein", "Roman Fever", and "The Long Run", if you haven't read those.

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Richmond, Va.: In the review of your book by the Washington Post, it says: "Wharton's take on American values, American marriage and the war between the sexes makes for a witty novel of American manners unexcelled by any writer since."

But if Wharton lived most of her life in France, are we to conclude that the American marriges and American values are those of ex-pats or of those who actually lived in America?

Hermione Lee: Wharton lived in France from about 1908 (intermittently) then permanently from 1913 to 1937. She wrote copiously about France and was deeply involved in French manners, customs, ways of life, art, culture, and people. Yet, like many ex-patriates, she continued all her life to write with close observation and involvement about the America she knew. Her characters are very often, like her, people who moved between countries, what she called "wretched exotics" who weren't really at home anywhere.

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Hermione Lee: I'm getting a number of questions about the relationship between Edith Wharton and Henry James, so maybe one answer could do for all. When they met, he was the maestro, she was the novice. He was 20 years older and she revered him (though she didn't like his late style, and didnt like being compared with him all the time, or being referred to, as one early reviewer did, as "a masculine Henry James". She was much wealthier than him, and became as if not more famous before he died in 1916. He used to find her bossy and demanding - he called her The Angel of Devastation - but he also admired her generosity, loved travelling with her in France, and was intimate with her marital and emotional problems. When she did so much great work for France in the first world war, he called her the great generalissima. It was a warm and complex relationship. But as writers I think they should be viewed quite differently, even though they used some of the same materials.

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Greenfield, Wisconsin: What is it about The Custom of the Country you like more than The House of Mirth or The Age of Innocence?

Hermione Lee: I know it's a peculiar choice of favourites, but I adore its ruthless energy, its bold choice of an unsympathetic heroine, and its brilliant comparative account of American and French manners and customs. I love its energy. But it doesn't move me to tears the way that The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence do.

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Alexandria, Virginia: Where did EW live in France?

Hermione Lee: First, from about 1908 to 1919, in the Rue de Varenne, in the very grand Faubourg St Germain area. Then after the war she bought and did up two beautiful houses, one in St-Brice in the Ile de France just outside Paris, one in the ruins of an old castle in Old Hyeres, above the Riviera. In both houses she made beautiful gardens. She lived in the Ile de France house in the summers and in the Riviera house in the mild southern winters. She died in St Brice in 1937.

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Chevy Chase, Md.: Well, I'm not sure how this chat room works, although I used such a device in receiving a recent advanced diploma from Oxford University, Kellogg College, in British local history. And I also enjoyed the positive review of your book in the New York Times book review on Sunday - not sure if the Post also carried it...plan to buy it tonight from Barnes & Noble, in fact.

washingtonpost.com: Washington Post Book World review of "Edith Wharton."

Hermione Lee: I hope you enjoy it!

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Lex Park: Do you like any of the movies or television shows made from Wharton's works? I rather liked Scorses's "The Age of Innocence". I think I saw a television version Of "Ethan Frome" but I think i was a childwhen I saw it. I also know "The Buccaners" was filmed a few years ago but I was never able to catch it. On a very different topic, do you cover in any depth Wharton's travels and writings as a pioneering cross country automobilist?

Hermione Lee: Yes, I am very keen on Terence Davies's brilliant film of The House of Mirth with Gillian Anderson as Lily Bart. I prefer it to the Scorsese although that was a powerful film, because I thought there was some miscasting (Ellen Olenska is meant to be vivid, thin, dark, lively, not large and fair like Michelle Pfeiffer!) and it wasnt subtle enough in distinguishing between different levels of wealth. There's a very decent film of Ethan Frome with Liam Neeson. The Buccaneers television series was pretty bad, I thought: sentimentalised and too frilly.

Yes, I am very interested in the travels, and took a journey by car through France with my friend the novelist Julian Barnes for BBC's Radio 3 a couple of years ago, tracing the journey that Edith Wharton and Henry James made by car to places like George Sand's house in Nohant.

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Greenfield, Wisconsin: I'm so curious about EW's relationship with Walter Berry. Are they buried next to each other? Why do you think she destroyed all their correspondence?

Hermione Lee: Well may you be curious. If that correspondence had survived, we would know much more about her secret life. But she believed in secrets and would have preferred to keep her privacy. My sense of that relationship was that she fell in love with him when they first met but he did not or could not commit to her; then, after her marriage, they became life long friends with very close literary and cultural interests but, I would imagine, not lovers - because he was a dandy-bachelor who was always running after other ladies. They are buried close together, but there is another grave, sadly, between them, in the cemetery at Versailles.

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University Park, MD: The Custom of the Country is the one I find saddest, because of the poor little boy. He's all but ignored by his mother, who takes him away from the only people who actually love him.

Hermione Lee: Yes, the little boy is a wonderful figure. She is very good indeed at children. See that fine, underrated novel, The Children.

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My book club read "House of Mirth": Sorry, I forgot to include that in my original ?.

Hermione Lee: And what did your club think about the secret "word" at the end of that novel: did you think it was the word "love"?

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McLean, Va: Hello, Ms. Lee. You're a professor...what have been two of the most innovative (yet well supported) theses proposed to you by students in your women writers class? What are the types of questions your students ask you about being an artist and a woman?

Hermione Lee: I don't teach a woman writers class. I teach Woolf, and give a whole range of courses and lectures on modernist writers, biography, life-writing, American literature - but I don't isolate women writers.

Hermione Lee: My graduate students have been, or are, working on (among other things) Elizabeth Bowen, Rosamond Lehmann, Dora Marsden, Marina Warner, Woolf and the art of the 1930s, and a whole lot of other topics NOT on women writers only!

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Manassas, VA: Very interesting chat. Two questions: (1) for someone who hasn't read Edith Wharton, what book do you recommend to start with? (2) Is it known why EW chose to live in Europe rather than the US?

Thanks!

Hermione Lee: Thanks.

I recommend Ethan Frome and The Age of Innocence to start with, and some stories - "Autres Temps...", "Roman Fever", "The Long Run", "Bunner Sisters". If you like these, then try The Custom of the Country and The Children.

Yes, in answer to question 2, she often spoke about her alienation from America from an early age and her passion for Europe. I write a great deal about this in my book.

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Custom of the Country: One of my favorite Wharton novels, too! In my opinion, it underscores Wharton's very keen ability for nuanced sarcasm! The heroine is one of the richest characters in literature.

Hermione Lee: nuanced sarcasm - that's good. But I don't think of her, quite, as sarcastic or as a satirist. She's too deep and wise.

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My book club read "House of Mirth": I was inclined to believe it. Some thought it should be "stupid" as they thought Lily Bart was horrifically shallow; I whole-heartedly disagreed!

Hermione Lee: But it's interesting, isnt it, how Wharton shifts in her attitudes to Lily, sometimes deeply sympathetic, sometimes holding her at arm's length and calling her Miss Bart.

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Washington DC: A comparison of Wharton's novel with the film version of "Ethan Frome" is interesting. In Wharton's book, Ethan went no further than simply imagining kissing Mattie, whereas the film got them in bed together. My sense was that the filmmakers were concerned that modern audiences wouldn't otherwise understand Zenobia's (? sorry, working from memory) strong reaction. Any thoughts?

Hermione Lee: Of course the whole point of the book is that they are frustrated in their love. As are Newland and Ellen in The Age of Innocence, or Martin in The Children, and a host of others. She understands thwarted love very well.

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Concord, MA: I know that Edith Wharton was interested in interion design and gardening-- do you think this influenced the structure and aesthetics of her fiction?

Hermione Lee: Yes, very much so. Her first book, with a house designer called Ogden Codman, was called The Decoration of Houses; one of her early stories describes a woman's nature being like a great house full of rooms, with a secret room at the centre where the woman's soul sits, and no-one gets close - least of all the husband. My whole book (which I've tried to design like a series of interconnecting rooms) is inspired by the relationship in her work and life between house design, architecture, and the writing of novels.

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Boston, MA: Do you think that Edith Wharton goes too far in her "archness" and cynicism in "Custom of the Country?" I know you said that it is your favorite. I feel like it could have been a hundred pages longer.

Hermione Lee: I don't think she's arch or cynical. I think she's witty, wise, and profoundly analytical.

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Arlington, VA: Some years ago I went on an EW spree -- I read most of the novels and the RWB Lewis bio. My questions are:

1. How do you think your approach differs from that of Lewis's? (e.g., new material, different emphases, etc. Just looking for a reason to read the newer bio!)

2. What is your opinion of the novel "The Children"? Where did she get the inspiration for this novel? The book was not as strong as some of the others, but it was shockingly prescient, as if EW were writing from the vantage point of the 1970s not the 1920s.

Hermione Lee: I am a great admirer of Lewis's biography, but I felt several things about it: one that it's of its time, a quarter of a century ago, and there are more things to be said now about her emotional and sexual life; two, that a great deal of new material has been found or come out since he wrote it; three, that he left a great deal still to be said about the novels and stories, which I spend a great deal of time on in my book; and four, that I felt the emphasis on his book was very much on America rather than Europe.

I love the Children. A heartbreaking, subtle, and very surprising and startling book.

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Shenandoah, Iowa: This is a fabulous chat. I would love to hear more about the "journey by car through France with my friend the novelist Julian Barnes for BBC's Radio 3." And do you talk about it in the book? Any idea if the audio is available from the BBC?

Hermione Lee: I think it is - to be honest I'm not sure - it's called "The Vehicle of Passion", which is what Henry used to call Edith's car. We didn't exactly play Edith and Henry - that's the great thing about radio (or chat rooms), you don't have to dress up - but we read bits of them aloud as we talked about our own journey.

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You & RWB Lewis: Thanks for taking questions. I read Lewis' bio of Edith Wharton many years ago. How would you compare your approach to writing her bio vs. Mr. Lewis's?

Hermione Lee: I think you'll see I've just answered that question about the Lewis biography - sorry not to answer you personally!

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Greenfield, Wisconsin: What is your impression of The Mount and did you see EW's library?

Hermione Lee: The Mount is a remarkable house because although very grand and stately (and modelled on a mixture of French, Italian and English designs), it is also very livable in and dedicated to privacy and comfort. I have watched it through its recent stages of improvement with fascination and admiration.

I had the great good fortune to study Edith Wharton's books - the remains of her library - when they were still in England. They had arrived there through an extraordinary series of circumstances, from when she left them to her godson, Colin Clark, the son of the art historian Kenneth Clark, in the 1930s. They were bought by a Yorkshire bookdealer who let me study them over a long period of time, before they were sold to The Mount. So I looked at every mark she made in her books and all her dedications from famous authors and every comment she wrote in her books. All that is in my book, especially in a chapter called "A private library". I hope that the books, now at the Mount, will be made available to other scholars of Wharton.

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Arlington, Virginia: You commented above that you disliked the BBC film of "The Buccaneers". It's one of my favorite Whartons, though I know it isn't generally considered her best work. What did you think of the book?

I know Wharton left it unfinished when she died, and I've read two different authors' efforts to finish the manuscript (Mainwaring and Mackworth-Young) in accordance with her outline. What do you think of their efforts? Do you have a preference between the two, or are there other versions I haven't encountered?

Hermione Lee: I think authors' unfinished work should be left unfinished...

I greatly admire the Buccaneers. Critics have tended to call it romantic and gentle, but I find it fierce and dark: a severe and painful account of a particularly strange aspect of the marriage market, beautiful young American girls with money being sold off to impoverished English aristocrats. There was a lot of that going on!

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Annandale, NY: Dear Professor Lee -

I read your fascinating book "Virginia Wolf's Nose" and it begs an obvious question: what were the faintest traces of Wharton that you discovered and/or what did you find most puzzling when having to piece together this life?

Thank you,

Stephen

Hermione Lee: I'm delighted you read Virginia Woolf's Nose, a collection of essays published by Princeton University Press, and now in paperback, on what goes missing in a life-story, and how biography, far from being a smooth and complete operation, is bound to be full of fragments, gaps and guesses. I think the most frustrating gaps in EW's life are the many intimate letters she wrote to James, almost all of which he burnt in a big bonfire of letters at the bottom of his garden.

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Linden, Michigan: Hello. Edith seemed concerned about money throughout her life. What happened to her wealth after she died? Who got what and who didn't receive anything that thought they should have?

Hermione Lee: The story of the will is a sad and muddled one and I try to piece it together at the end of my book (as did Shari Benstock, very well, in her book on Wharton about ten years ago). The short version is that there was a quarrel between Wharton's surviving relation, her niece, the landscape designer Beatrix Farrand, and her closest woman friend, Elisina Tyler, who had looked after her in her last years. They fell out over the will and took each other to court. The houses were both sold off to other people.

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Hermione Lee: Thank you all very much for your interesting questions about Edith Wharton. I hope you'll enjoy my biography of her and I wish you great pleasure in reading more Wharton in the future.

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