In Morocco - Edith Wharton

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Résumé :
In Morocco is Edith Wharton's vivid 1920 travel narrative recording her journey through French-controlled Morocco during the First World War. Written with clarity, restraint, and cultivated intelligence, the work combines close observation of landscape, architecture, politics, and social custom with Wharton's unmistakable literary poise. Traveling under the auspices of French authorities, she was granted unusual access to cities newly opened to European visitors, including Rabat, Fez, and Marrakesh, and she records them at a moment of transition between medieval continuity and modern colonial administration. Rather than indulging in exoticism, Wharton offers architectural detail, historical context, and acute psychological insight into the tensions between preservation and change. Her prose moves between desert light, intricate Islamic design, and the realities of imperial governance with disciplined elegance. In Morocco stands not only as a travel memoir but as a document of early twentieth-century geopolitics, seen through the eyes of one of America's most accomplished stylists. This edition presents the complete and unabridged text, preserving Wharton's refined narrative voice for modern readers interested in travel literature, colonial history, North African studies, and early twentieth-century cultural observation....

Biographie:
Edith Wharton, born into old money, was brought up in the aristocratic society of New York in the late 1800s. She was a rebel of a woman, born before her time. Edith was raised with a lot of pressure to be a proper woman and wife, though her limited beauty and insistence to read and write brought trouble into her romantic life. What dalliances she did indulge in with men in her social circle always ended poorly. Even her eventual marriage was not a happy one, and she and her husband were both unfaithful. Ultimately, she moved herself to Europe and filed for a divorce. This theme of romantic frustration is seen frequently in her works as an author, which include well known stories like House of Mirth, Ethan Frome, and The Age of Innocence. It was due to her father's extensive library and a governess's intentional teachings that Edith developed such a powerful literary voice. In 1921, Edith Wharton became the first woman in history to win the Pulitzer Prize with a story that criticized the mating rituals of New York society. She spent her golden years in the French countryside, where she passed away on August 11, 1937....

Sommaire:
Edith Wharton (1862-1937) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and critic celebrated for her incisive portrayals of wealth, social convention, and personal freedom. Born into a prominent New York family, she grew up within the privileged society she would later examine with unusual clarity and skepticism. Her intimate knowledge of its manners, expectations, and hypocrisies gave her fiction both authority and sharpness.Wharton wrote more than forty books, including novels, story collections, poetry, travel writing, and works on architecture and design. Her best-known books include The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome, The Custom of the Country, and The Age of Innocence. In 1921, she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Age of Innocence.During World War I, Wharton organized extensive relief work in France and was awarded the French Legion of Honor. Today, she is regarded as one of the major American writers of the twentieth century, admired for her elegant prose, psychological insight, and unsparing examination of the social forces that shape individual lives....