Motor-Flight Through France

by Edith Wharton

Overview

Shedding the constraints that existed for women in turn-of-the-century America, Edith Wharton set out in the newly invented "motor-car" to explore the cities and countryside of France. Originally published in 1908, A Motor-Flight Through France is considered by many to be the very best of Wharton’s outstanding travel writings. While Wharton’s novels are darkly funny and deliciously catty, and her short stories are populated by adulterers, murderers, and artists, A Motor-Flight Through France captures all of the riches and charm of France during the Belle Époque in gorgeous, romantic prose. Like many Americans, Wharton was utterly beguiled by France at the dawn of the twentieth century, and in this volume her brilliant sketches of "l’Hexagone" provide an enchanting and indelible portrait of the land during this era. But Wharton’s travelogue is as much about the thrill of travel as it is about place. With the automobile in its infancy, Wharton was experiencing the countryside as few people ever had, liberated from the ugliness of train yards and the constraints of passage by rail. “The motor-car has restored the romance of travel,” she wrote, and readers of this wonderful book will be grateful to experience it through her eyes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780875806860
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	11/15/2012
Edition description:	New edition
Pages:	253
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. She is the author of such classics in American literature as The House of Mirth, The Custom of the Country, The Age of Innocence, and Ethan Frome.

Date of Birth:

January 24, 1862

Date of Death:

August 11, 1937

Place of Birth:

New York, New York

Place of Death:

Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt, France

Education:

Educated privately in New York and Europe

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
Preface
Note on the Text
Introduction by Mary Suzanne Schriber
Part I
I. Boulogne to Amiens
II. Beauvais and Rouen
III. From Rouen to Fontainebleau
IV. The Loire and the Indre
V. Nohant to Clermont
VI. In Auverge
VII. Royat to Bourges
Part II
I. Paris to Poitiers
II. Poitiers to the Pyrenees
III. The Pyrenees to Provence
IV. The Rhone to the Seine
Part III
A Flight to the North-East

Editorial Reviews

Those who have been charmed with Mrs. Wharton's novels will not be disappointed by her venture into the unfamiliar role of a travel writer.

New York Times

A portrait of a long-forgotten France, a country that, when Wharton ranged over it in her 1904 Panhard-Levassor, was largely unchanged from medieval times.

-- "New York Times Book Review"

Those who have been charmed with Mrs. Wharton's novels will not be disappointed by her venture into the unfamiliar role of a travel writer.

-- "New York Times"

Wharton's reflections will still charm those who've been and those who dream. A nice addition to American literature as well as travel collections.

-- "Library Journal"

From the Publisher

A portrait of a long-forgotten France, a country that, when Wharton ranged over it in her 1904 Panhard-Levassor, was largely unchanged from medieval times.

New York Times Book Review