No fewer than eight thousand letters of Edith Wharton survive in libraries and private collections. Correspondence was the lubricant of the many whirring wheels of her long and active life. If her art was her first love, it was still only one of many. She ran two large houses, one near Paris, the other on the Riviera, with well-trained staffs and elaborate gardens; she travelled incessantly, the most indefatigable and discriminating of tourists; she entertained with charm and skill (Henry James spoke of her “succulent and corrupting meals”); she raised large sums for charity, particularly in World War I; and she kept a sharp eye on her publishers and her investments. In her “leisure” hours she read exhaustively, treasured her friendships, and loved her dogs. Percy Lubbock quoted ingenuous critics as saying that her books had to be written “on the bare margin of such a populous and ornamental existence.”

Every day there were people to write: editors, agents, lawyers, men of business, American cousins at home, and then, more importantly for posterity, the cherished friends: Sara Norton, Daisy Chanler, Moreton Fullerton, Gaillard Lapsley, John Hugh-Smith, Bernard Berenson. The Lewises, excellent editors of this rich volume, found that half of the surviving correspondence was of little interest to the general reader. Of the remaining four thousand letters they have used four hundred. These epistles are vivid, deeply intelligent, and highly readable. Above all, they constitute an indispensable annex to R. W. B. Lewis’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography. In some