New Queries

These are recent queries from the Wharton Society site. To respond, please send an email to whartonqueries@yahoo.com or use the comment form. You can also reply using the comments feature on this blog. Thanks.

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Theatre Adaptations of Wharton's Works Hello - I'm looking for any recommendations for theatre adaptations of Wharton's novels. We're a new London-based company looking specifically for adaptations of female writers' work. If anyone has any recommendations, I would love to hear them, particularly if they have yet to be produced in the UK. Louise Hill

Updated 3/24/06 to include this response:

Regarding Louise Hill's inquiry about theater adaptations of Wharton novels: Mint Theater Company in New York has published the dramatization of The House of Mirth that Wharton wrote herself in 1906, along with playwright Clyde Fitch. The Mint text revises the play somewhat using material from the novel. Mint also has a copy of the Margaret Ayer Barnes' 1928 dramatization of The Age of Innocence. For more information please contact Mint Artistic Director Jonathan Bank: jbank@minttheater.org

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Edith Wharton--travel to San Francisco? Did Edith Wharton ever visit San Francisco?

Deborah Doyle
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Wharton's family--New York? Can you tell me if Edith Wharton's family originated in New York City society and if the family name is related to the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. I know from my own New Jersey family that many of the old names came from one root. I am thinking of Vanevar Bush and George Bush both also from Massachusetts history. Thank you for you reply.

Carolyn Gill
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People resembling their houses

In a memoir, A Place in the Country, by Laura Shaine Cunningham, she writes that Wharton wrote that people became their houses, even looked like them. Cunningham, of course, gives no citation. Does this ring true with you and do you have any ideas as to where I might find this thought. Thank you in advance for your consideration.

Judith Church Tydings
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Edith Wharton's dogs I'm the author of a series of books for young people about Impressionist painters and their circle ("Charlotte in Giverny," "Charlotte in Paris," "Charlotte in New York") published by Chronicle Books. Now Charlotte is off to Italy where she meets Edith Wharton. Charlotte loves dogs and has a Brussels Griffon named Toby. I'd like to know more about Edith Wharton and her dogs. Did she have any breeds other than Papillons? What are some of the names she gave her dogs? Many thanks! Joan Knight

Joan M. Knight

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Scarcity of French Ways and their Meaning

Can you inform me as to the scarcity of dust jacketed copies of the first UK edition of 'French Ways and their Meaning' London,1919?

Used book sites on the internet all seem not to have seen a dust jacketed copy of "French Ways and their Meaning". Is it really that scarce?
B Benneworth