Edith Wharton in France

Using previously unexamined and untranslated French sources, Claudine Lesage has illuminated the intertwined characters and important relationships of Wharton’s French life. The bulk of the new material comes from the daybooks of Paul and Minnie Bourget; Wharton’s letters (in French) to Léon Bélugou; and the author’s personal research in Hyères. Highlights include letters used in Wharton’s divorce proceedings and a mysterious autobiographical essay written by Wharton’s lover Morton Fullerton. Most significantly, Wharton’s friendship with Bélugou, absent from most Wharton biographies, is, for the first time, fully recounted through their extensive intimate correspondence.The year 1907 was a milestone in Edith Wharton’s life and work. Unlike Joseph Conrad, who had, virtually overnight, forsaken his native land for an adopted one, Mrs. Wharton’s transition required several years of shuttling back and forth across the Atlantic. At first, all of Europe beckoned to her, but, from 1907 on, Wharton would claim Paris and, after the war, the French countryside as her home. All the while, her work, long regarded as being exclusively American, followed a similar trajectory.

The French author Claudine Lesage, nee Holuigue, was born in 1943. She obtained a Ph.D. in English Literature at Amiens in 1987, specializing in the works of Joseph Conrad. Lesage published several books about Conrad: La maison de Therese (1992), Joseph Conrad et le Continent (2003), and translations of his works: Le Forban (2005), Du gout des voyages (2007), and Coeur des Tenebres (2009).In 1989, while researching Conrad at the library of the Cote d’Azur town of Hyeres, Lesage discovered an unsigned manuscript that appeared to be an early work of Edith Wharton. After studying the manuscript, Lesage determined it was an unpublished account of Wharton’s 1888 Mediterranean cruise aboard the private yacht, The Vanadis.

After publishing the journal as The Cruise of the Vanadis, Lesage probed further into Wharton’s work and her life, concentrating on the American writer’s French years. Lesage translated several Wharton short stories; edited Lettres a l'ami Francais (2001); and authored Edith Wharton en France (2011).

Dr. Lesage died in 2013 before she could publish her final manuscript, a work on Wharton’s life in France intended for an American audience.