From the New York Times:
In Edith Wharton's circle, a lady who worked as a dressmaker was no lady. When Lily Bart, the ill-starred adventuress of "The House of Mirth," was finally reduced to working as a milliner, her exile from society was all but complete. That, of course, was before Mlle. Chanel changed the meaning of the term "designing woman" and established that black and white works better as a design statement than as a way of judging others.

From SFGate.com
Of course, Paul Bowles was attracted to Fez. So was Edith Wharton. And so continue to be hundreds of thousands of tourists who visit the Moroccan city that's famous for its 1,000-year-old medina (the non-European part of a north African city).

From the Washington Post

Win One for the Flipper

By Marjorie Williams
Sunday, March 7, 2004; Page B07


I've been trying, really I have. As a charter member of the ABB Society -- Anybody But Bush -- I've tried not to fret over the alarmingly tautological nature of John Kerry's victory. He was inevitable because voters picked him to win because he had won over earlier voters and therefore must be a winner. I've tried not to worry over the fact that he has all the social bonhomie of one of Edith Wharton's ambivalent society stiffs. We know that some crucial part of the presidential electorate votes on impressions of likability, but I've assured myself that between now and November Kerry will warm up.

--Submitted by Abby Werlock

From Hermione Lee's review of The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant (in The Guardian):
In "A Flying Start", one of Gallant's American ladies in Paris holds court in a sombre dining room overshadowed by a tree "grown from a sapling presented by Edith Wharton". In her youth she "had been allowed to peer round the door and watch her renowned compatriot eating sole meunière. She had not been presented to Mrs Wharton, who was divorced." This little tribute is apt as well as funny: Gallant has something of Wharton's fine, cool eye for social shifts and conflicts. And like Wharton she is a refugee from a culture she couldn't wait to get away from, but often returns to in her work.

From PLAYBILL:
Boston's Huntington Theatre Company will present its first Breaking Ground Festival, March 18-21, which will feature readings of four new play commissions — including a new Stephen Belber (Match, Tape) work — and a new musical based on the Edith Wharton novel "House of Mirth." . . .
The Festival continues March 21 at 3 PM with a reading of the new American musical Lily by Brooks Ashmanskas (music and lyrics) and Peter Flynn (book). The new adaptation, based on Edith Wharton's classic novel "House of Mirth," centers on the title character's rise and fall among high society in New York at the beginning of the 20th century.