The Decoration of Houses - New York State by Edith Wharton & Ogden Codman Paperback

About the Book

"This annotated edition of Edith Wharton's decorating guidebook includes a new comprehensive introduction, with relevant biographical information, and reproductions of the book's original illustrations"--

Book Synopsis

Edith Wharton's The Decoration of Houses (1897), co-written with the architect Ogden Codman Jr., brought transatlantic fame to a writer best known as a chronicler of Gilded Age New York. In their decorating guidebook, Wharton and Codman, who collaborated on the design of the author's Massachusetts home, The Mount, advocated for simple but classically informed choices that resonate profoundly today. The book crystallizes what Wharton found to be troubling in Americans' enthusiasm for ostentation at the turn of the twentieth century--the late Victorian equivalent of the modern "McMansion."

This annotated edition includes a comprehensive introduction that provides relevant biographical information on Wharton, as well as her literary work and how her perspectives on homeownership and décor informed her writing. The reproduction of the book's original illustrations alongside new annotations allows readers to visualize how Wharton's aesthetic preferences informed her writing, life, and charitable works. Valuable to Wharton scholars as well as students of design, The Decoration of Houses presents a definitive look at the tastes of a literary icon.

Review Quotes

A significant new contribution to scholarship on Wharton's aesthetics that should in turn prompt renewed appraisals of her descriptions of home décor and spatial design in such works as Sanctuary, Italian Villas, and The House of Mirth.-- "American Literary Realism"

An extraordinary fusion of scholarly book and practical can-do guide. It's a must-read.-- "Laura Rattray, author of Edith Wharton and Genre"

From Wharton's distaste for the vulgar to her delight in proportion, Orlando explores the background of the writer's early passion for beautiful living as the basis for the moral vision of her fictions.-- "Dale M. Bauer, author of Edith Wharton's Brave New Politics"

Orlando's authoritative edition of The Decoration of Houses expertly illuminates the breadth of Edith Wharton's knowledge of classical and renaissance architecture, late-Victorian design, and her thinking in the book about the relation between domestic space and lived experience.-- "Paul Ohler, author of Edith Wharton's Evolutionary Conception: Darwinian Allegory in Her Major Novels"

Orlando's stunning introduction and thorough annotations showcase her deep familiarity with the text and its authors, and illuminate the book's composition, contexts, history, and reception, as well as its enduring influence today.-- "Gary Totten, editor of Memorial Boxes and Guarded Interiors: Edith Wharton and Material Culture"

About the Author

Emily J. Orlando is professor of English and E. Gerald Corrigan Chair in the Humanities and Social Sciences at Fairfield University. She is the author of Edith Wharton and the Visual Arts, editor of The Bloomsbury Handbook to Edith Wharton, and co-editor of Edith Wharton and Cosmopolitanism.