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Interior and garden design

Laura Rattray, a leading Wharton scholar now at the University of Glasgow and the editor of this book, commissioned this essay through an academic network of Wharton specialists. Rattray sought a design historian able to combine a sound knowledge of Edith Wharton’s fiction and non-fiction with specialist knowledge of the history of architecture, interiors and garden design in Europe and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The essay discusses Wharton’s books on interior and garden design, The Decoration of Houses (1897) and Italian Villas and their Gardens (1904) in the contexts of the history of design in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and includes interpretations of Wharton’s approaches to interiors and gardens in her fiction within the narrative.

The book offers new critical insights for students and academics in departments of English and American studies and is also of interest to researchers in gender studies, film studies, art, architectural and design history and transatlantic studies.