Edith Wharton

First edition, first printing of an unusual memoir, highlighting the novelties of automobile travel in pre-war France.

• Edith Wharton (American).
• New York: Charles Scriber’s Sons, 1908.
• x, 201, [3] pages.
• Bookplate on front pastedown.
• Bound in original green gilt-stamped cloth, gilt-lettered spine, top edge gilt, other edges uncut.

Motor-Flight records a series of trips through France with various unnamed companions, one of whom we know to be her friend and peer Henry James. Emphasizing the freedom of movement that cars offered, Wharton’s travel narrative is notable as an early book embracing cultural changes affected by the new transportation technology. Written from the perspective of an educated American woman visiting the continent, the narrative reads harmoniously with Wharton’s novels, and those of Henry James as well. Of the lost world it records, Shawn Gillen notes the book is “one of the last substantial American accounts of France prior to World War I.” Introduction to later Scribner edition writes “A record of the twilight of the long-standing American romance with Europe that World War I was destined to alter forever."

Gillen, “Edith Wharton,” in Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Encyclopedia, 1278.

Garrison, Edith Wharton: A Descriptive Bibliography, A 16.I.a.