"Emily Orlando delivers a breakthrough and long-overdue edition of one of the most revealing books in Edith Wharton’s career and elegantly recreates her codes for American taste. The volume offers multiple visions of the author’s influence in the decoration of houses, the aesthetics for the world in which she lived, and her famous coordination with the architect, Ogden Codman, himself. From Wharton’s distaste for the vulgar to her delight in proportion, Orlando explores the background of the writer’s early passion for beautiful living as the basis for the moral vision of her fictions."—Dale M. Bauer, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
"Emily J. Orlando introduces us anew to Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman, Jr.’s The Decoration of Houses in an authoritative and elegant edition befitting its subject. Orlando’s stunning introduction and thorough annotations showcase her deep familiarity with the text and its authors, and illuminate the book’s composition, contexts, history, and reception, as well as its enduring influence today. The connections that Orlando draws between this early book and Wharton’s subsequent writing, and Wharton’s own homes and experiences, are rich and generative. This first scholarly edition of The Decoration of Houses is an invaluable resource for scholars, students, and general readers interested in architectural and cultural history and Wharton’s gilded age."—Gary Totten, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Description
Edith Wharton’s The Decoration of Houses (1897), co-written with the architect Ogden Codman Jr., brought transatlantic fame to a writer best known as a chronicler of Gilded Age New York. In their decorating guidebook, Wharton and Codman, who collaborated on the design of the author’s Massachusetts home, The Mount, advocated for simple but classically informed choices that resonate profoundly today. The book crystallizes what Wharton found to be troubling in Americans’ enthusiasm for ostentation at the turn of the twentieth century—the late Victorian equivalent of the modern “McMansion.”
This annotated edition includes a comprehensive introduction that provides relevant biographical information on Wharton, as well as her literary work and how her perspectives on homeownership and décor informed her writing. The reproduction of the book’s original illustrations alongside new annotations allows readers to visualize how Wharton’s aesthetic preferences informed her writing, life, and charitable works. Valuable to Wharton scholars as well as students of design, The Decoration of Houses presents a definitive look at the tastes of a literary icon.
About the Author
Emily J. Orlando is professor of English and E. Gerald Corrigan Chair in the Humanities and Social Sciences at Fairfield University. She is the author of Edith Wharton and the Visual Arts, editor of The Bloomsbury Handbook to Edith Wharton, and co-editor of Edith Wharton and Cosmopolitanism.
October 2024