"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, 1908
A trailblazer among American women at the turn of the century, Edith Wharton set out in the newly invented "motor-car" to explore the cities and countryside of France. As the Whartons embark on three separate journeys through the country in 1906 and 1907, accompanied first by Edith's brother, Harry Jones, and then by Henry James, Edith is enamored by the freedom that this new form of transport has given her. With a keen eye for architecture and art, and the engrossing style that would later earn her a Pulitzer Prize in fiction, Wharton writes about places that she previously "yearned for from the windows of the train."
A Motor-Flight Through France captures the riches and charm of France during the Belle Époque in gorgeous, romantic prose. With the automobile in its infancy, Wharton experienced the countryside as few people ever had, liberated from the tedium and passivity of train travel. "The motor-car has restored the romance of travel," she writes. Seeing through Wharton's eyes, readers are sure to have their own appreciation for the road trip reawakened.
Now published for the first time as an illustrated ebook with photographs reproduced directly from the 1908 first edition, with a new introduction by acclaimed travel writer Lavinia Spalding, the Restless Books edition of A Motor-Flight Through France kicks off an eye-opening new series of women writing about travel, with fresh introductions by some of our best contemporary travel writers. This overlooked classic will inspire current and future generations of readers and adventurers.
Praise for A Motor-Flight Through France
"Edith Wharton's graceful sentences create dramatic, populous tableaux and peel back layer after layer of artifice and pretense, of what we say and how we wish to appear, revealing the hidden kernel of what human beings are like, alone and together."--Francine Prose, New York Review of Books
"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 (1908)
"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
"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