From the Boston Globe:

The Breaking Ground Festival, which runs from March 18 through 21, will feature readings of works in progress by writers commissioned through the Huntington playwriting fellowship program, along with a reading of a new musical, "Lily," based on Edith Wharton's novel "The House of Mirth." http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2004/02/19/huntington_fest_gives_a_read_on_new_plays/

Review of a local production of Ethan Frome from The Hawk Eye.

From The Guardian:
"So what does make us happy? Edith Wharton apparently said that happiness is the sublime moment when you get out of your corsets. Having burnt my bra in the Seventies on my mother's instructions I can't say I know how that feels. But I know what she means."

From The Chronicle of Higher Education:

THE BANANA AND ITS PUBLIC: A century ago, the banana was still a relative novelty in the United States. In certain people's eyes, it even carried an aura of vulgarity. In the summer of 1904, Edith Wharton wrote to a friend about an unhappy stay at a new hotel: "Such dreariness, such whining callow women. ... What a horror it is for a whole nation to be developing without a sense of beauty and eating bananas for breakfast."

Wharton's aesthetic scruples notwithstanding, the banana was cheaper, higher in calories, and easier to store than most of its rival fruits. As international shipping expanded, bananas soon became popular among Americans of all classes. In 1940, more than 52 million bunches were imported. And as the industry grew, it disrupted and transformed the economies, cultures, and political structures of the banana-exporting countries of Latin America. The new anthology Banana Wars: Power, Production and History in the Americas (Duke University Press) sheds light on the complexities of the industry's social and economic history, deconstructing the already familiar images of the muscular United Fruit Company and its "banana republics" and moving beyond them.

From the Washington Post:
Torque n. the film that features a villain named Henry James, conjuring the tantalizing image of Edith Wharton riding shotgun wearing a "Fear This" tattoo and a Ramones T-shirt.

From the International Herald Tribune:
Marcel Proust, "Proust of the Ritz," as he was called, dined there often with the "gratin," or upper crust, eyed the pageboys and gossiped intently with the ambiguous Olivier. Edith Wharton, on the other hand, detested the place. Paris ladies, said one of her acquaintances, could be divided into two groups: "Ritz and anti-Ritz. The anti-Ritz class contains only Mrs. Edith Wharton."
http://www.iht.com/articles/125182.html

"Also today, Judith Anderson and Helen Menken star in the opening night of The Old Maid, Zoe Akins' adaptation of Edith Wharton's novel about two sisters in love with the same man during the Civil War. It wins the Pulitzer Prize for drama and runs 305 performances at the Empire Theatre."From the PLAYBILL site's "Today in Theater History" for January 7: "1935

This year's MLA meeting (27-30 December) marks the 20th anniversary of the Edith Wharton Society.

From the BERKSHIRE HERALD, December 23, 2003:

Dr. Hale, the town’s one doctor, would come to people’s houses day or night, she said. He drove a horse and wagon, and later a car, but always walked to nearer calls. He had a raccoon coat and galoshes that he always wore unbuckled. In “Ethan Frome,” Edith Wharton mentions a young doctor, Ed Hale, who married the judge’s daughter, Annie Walker — as the real Dr. Hale had, Peters said.
http://www.iberkshires.com/story.php?story_id=13071

From the WALL STREET JOURNAL:
"RHINEBECK, N.Y. (Oct. 8, 2003) -- It was the original McMansion, a home so grand that many believe it inspired the phrase "Keeping up with the Joneses." Now it's for sale, and it may well be torn down.

So imposing was Wyndclyffe, built in 1853 by Edith Wharton's aunt, Elizabeth Schermerhorn Jones, that it was the beginning of a craze for building ever-more-elaborate houses along the Hudson River. The Jones house had a four-story tower, intricate brickwork, 24 rooms, 80 acres of lawn and woodland and sweeping river views. Nearby estate owners soon were adding turrets, towers and extra wings." More at
http://homes.wsj.com/columnists/preservation/20031008-silverman.html
Submitted by Julie Olin-Ammentorp

"Summer, the Richard Rodgers Development Award-winning musical based on the steamy Edith Wharton novel, gets a Manhattan reading under the direction of Leonard Foglia Dec. 11." From the Playbill site. http://www.playbill.com/news/article/83208.html

The new book A IS FOR ABIGAIL, "an almanac of amazing American
women" by Lynne Cheney (Simon & Schuster 2003) features Edith Wharton on the "W" page.

Submitted by Julie Olin-Ammentorp

Garland Farm, Home of Beatrix Farrand

Beatrix Farrand was a noted landscape gardener and also the niece of Edith Wharton. Here's a site with information about the farm along with pictures of the gardens.http://members.aol.com/SaveGarlandFarm . --Submitted by Julie Olin-Ammentorp

Photo of the Mary Mason Jones House.
1890 limestone Chateau style mansion of Edith
Wharton's aunt pictured--then and the site now--at the NE
corner of 57th and 5th in New York.
http://www.nysocialdiary.com/archive/socialdiary8.18.03.html
Submitted by Sandra Foster

Edith Wharton is mentioned in a review of Patricia Beard's "After The Ball", the retelling of a 1905 financial scandal of a New York Socialite. It "suggests how Edith Wharton might have sounded had she been hugely interested in the insurance business."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/04/books/04MASL.html

Sandra Foster
Brookhaven, NY

Garrison Keillor's short essay on Wharton is part of his Writer's Almanac. Scroll down to Wharton's birthday (January 24) to see the entry. http://www.writersalmanac.org/docs/03_01_20.htm

Candace Bushnell cites Edith Wharton as an inspiration in this article, and a New York Times review of one of her books suggests that she is influenced by The House of Mirth. http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~28~1531786,00.html

Poor Bill Clinton. He's trying to deal with Osama bin Laden and he's got a bunch of angry women on his case, and a sex-obsessed special prosecutor. He's like Ethan Frome, a guy who just wants to take a joy ride on a sled, and ends up getting stuck for life in a cramped cabin with the wife he betrayed and his now irritating and ubiquitous former dalliance

From Maureen Dowd's review of Hillary Rodham Clinton's Living History in the New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/29/books/review/29DOWDOT.html

"Bioperversity," by Lorrie Moore. The New Yorker ( May 19th, 2003) p. 88-89.

In Lorrie Moore's review of Margaret Atwood's novel, "Oryx and Crake," Moore notes that Atwood [is] "rare among feminist writers in apparently liking her men--if not their institutions--better than her women. (Not since Edith Wharton has a female writer filled her oeuvre with so many unpleasant female characters.)

note: the quotation appears on p. 89
Submitted by Deborah Hecht, hechtd@tourolaw.edu

Pencraig Cottage (now called Quail Tree House), Edith Wharton's early home in Newport, will be open for a decorator show house from May 17-June 15.