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Lively . . . Insightful . . . Thorough and intelligent . . .This meticulous, generous biography is likely to suffice for a long time . . . One can at last grasp the full range of Wharton’s writing and the full power of her energy.
— Diane Johnson, Washington Post Book World
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A splendid biography, extremely rich in social and historical detail, a telling picture of the many years Wharton’s life spanned . . . Biography is usually the revenge of little people on big people . . .but Lee is subtle and big-hearted enough to understand her subject . . . Lee never reduces Wharton’s books to veiled autobiography, just as she is never reluctant to interpret them in the light of Wharton’s life . . . A sophisticated, finely written portrait . . . Edith Wharton would have been horrified by the ‘indiscretions’ in this biography, but it is the balanced, richly detailed, and researched portrait she deserves.
— Edmund White, The New York Review of Books
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A rich tapestry. There is so much here . . . Edith Wharton shimmers with details about a vanished world, and Lee . . . brings it to vivid life.
— Jacqueline Blais, USA Today
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A remarkable feat . . . Nobody has done Edith Wharton such careful justice as Lee.
— Claire Messud, New York Times Book Review
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Magnificent . . . Unsurpassable in scope and surely in sensitivity . . . Filled to bursting with the friends, travels, projects and writings that engaged Wharton’s attention and energies.
— Linda Simon, Newsday
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Groundbreaking . . . A sophisticated, persuasive, powerfully intelligent masterwork.
— Lisa Shea, Elle
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Enables readers to feel they have known Mrs. W. all their lives.
— Barbara Amiel, Wall Street Journal
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Stunning . . . Rich . . . Wonderfully humanizing.
— Megan O’Grady, Vogue
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Rich . . . Fine . . . Much more than a literary study.
— Bruce Allen, The Washington Times
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Elegant . . . not only the best book on its subject, but one of the finest literary biographies to appear in recent years.
— Greg Johnson, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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A fascinating portrait of a brilliant writer.
— The Economist
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Absorbing . . . An exemplary biography . . . Sure to be the standard work on Wharton for years to come.
— Kirkus
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A major achievement . . . In no other biography is there a more perceptive analysis of how Wharton’s life was reflected in her work.
— Publishers Weekly
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Tremendous . . . Enlightening . . . Rises to landmark status . . . The formidable Mrs. Wharton is given great humanity here.
— Booklist
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The fullest biography of Wharton to date . . . Superb in using the fiction as a way to read the life, defining their relation in a way that is at once seamless but never simplified . . . Lee’s portraiture at its best seems Proustian.
— Michael Gorra, Times Literary Supplement (London)
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Monumentally conceived and impressively executed . . . Lee is out to understand Wharton, not to vilify or sanctify her . . . She is a discriminating and generous critic who offers full, fresh and incisive discussions of all the novels and scores of the short stories.
— Elaine Showalter, The Guardian (London)
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Epic and definitive . . . Lee is a confident and vivid critic.
— Jane Shilling, The Times (London)
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This is a glorious biography . . . The time is ripe for a new biography of Edith Wharton of this intimacy and on this scale . . . Lee the biographer pursues her subject down every winding corridor, into every hidden passage and dark corner . . . Her critical exploration of Edith Wharton’s work is dazzlingly assured . . . A feat of exhaustive research, and finely tuned to Wharton’s creative achievement at the same time . . . [Wharton] could scarcely have failed to be impressed by . . . its artistic sympathy, its sonorous depths, and its soaring conception.
— Mark Bostridge, The Independent on Sunday (London)
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Excellent . . . Particularly masterful in her discussion of Wharton’s fiction . . . A magnificent and subtle biography of a magnificent and subtle writer.
— Caroline Moore, Sunday Telegraph (London)
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Lee’s subtle and painstaking ability to illuminate the work with the life, and to make the life itself so interesting makes this a superb biography.
— Colm Tóibín, The Irish Times