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Summary Information

Repository
Lilly Library (Indiana University, Bloomington)
Lilly Library
Indiana University
1200 E. Seventh St.
Bloomington, IN 47405-5500
Phone: 812-855-2452
Fax: 812-855-3143
Email: liblilly@indiana.edu

Creator
Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937

Collection No.
LMC 2073

Extent
1,200 items

Language
Materials are in English

Abstract
Consists of the correspondence, diaries, and writings of novelist Edith Newbold Jones Wharton, 1862-1937.

Access Restrictions

This collection is open for research.

Biographical Note

Edith Newbold Jones Wharton, 1862-1937, was a novelist. All of this material was consulted and used by R.W.B. Lewis in his volume Edith Wharton: A Biography (New York: Harper & Row, 1975) and is described and cited there as the William Royall Tyler Collection, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC.

Arrangement

The collection is organized into family-related items, correspondence, writings, and files relating to Edith Wharton's death and estate.

Scope and Content Note

The earliest items in the collection are family related: a commonplace book of Lucretia Rhinelander (Wharton's mother) and an 1847 journal of her father's, George Frederic Jones. The correspondence begins in 1901 and includes letters from Bernar d Berenson, Mary (Smith) Berenson, Paul Bourget, Louis Bromfield, Sir Kenneth Clark, Royal Cortissoz, Beatrix Farrand, William Alexander Gerhardie, Louis Gillet, Abbé Arthur Mugnier, Violet Paget, Edward Brewster Sheldon, Logan Pearsall Smith, Elis ina Tyler, Royall Tyler, and William Royal Tyler, as well as nearly 400 letters from Edith Wharton to the Tyler family. Her own diaries cover primarily 1920-1937, but also present is the so-called "love diary" (A Life Apart) of 1907-08. Writings present include typescripts of her full-length works, Age of Innocence, A Backward Glance, and Gods Arrive, as well as many poems both published and unpublished, and a file of about two hundred photographs of Wharton and friends, of Pavillon Colombe, of Saint Claire Château, and of her other residences (The Mount, Pencraig and 58 rue de Varenne) complete this portion of the collection.

The remaining portion of the collection consists of files relating to Edith Wharton's death and her estate, as well as correspondence and other materials gathered by the executor of her French will, Elisina Tyler, for a planned biography of Wharto n. The biography was never completed and following Elisina's death in 1959, her son, William Royall Tyler, took over as executor of the Wharton estate. His correspondence as well as some additional materials relating to his own reminiscences of Mrs. Wh arton, complete the entire collection. Among the correspondents in this Wharton / Tyler portion of the collection are William Morton Fullerton, William Alexander Gerhardie, Frederic Rhinelander King, John Hugh Smith, Elisina Tyler, William Royall Tyler, Emelyn Webster Washburn, and Armitage Watkins. ]

Note on Indexing Term - "World War, 1914-1918": During World War I when she was living in France, Wharton became involved in various philanthropic activities and there is some material in the collection concerning these activities.

• Indexing Terms

• • Names
  • Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937.
  • Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937 --Correspondence.
  • Tyler, William Royall, 1910-
  • Tyler, Elisina, 1875-1959.
  • Berenson, Bernard, 1865-1959.
  • Tyler, Royall.
  • Berenson, Mary, 1864-1945
  • Bourget, Paul, 1852-1935.
  • Bromfield, Louis, 1896-1956.
  • Clark, Kenneth, 1903-1983
  • Cortissoz, Royal, 1869-1948.
  • Farrand, Beatrix, 1872-1959.
  • Gerhardie, William Alexander, 1895-1977
  • Gillet, Louis, 1876-1943.
  • Mugnier, abbé (Arthur), 1853-1944.
  • Lee, Vernon, 1856-1935.
  • Sheldon, Edward, 1886-1946.
  • Smith, Logan Pearsall, 1865-1946.
  • Fullerton, William Morton, b. 1865.
• • Topics
  • Authors, American --Correspondence.
  • Women
  • World War, 1914-1918

Administrative Information