The Cruise of The Vanadis

By Edith Wharton

Book Overview

American novelist Wharton (1862-1937) never published her diary of her 1888 voyage through the Mediterranean, and it now represents the only writing of hers besides scattered juvenalia from the first quarter century of her life. It foreshadows themes, styles, and methods she used later. Modern photo

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0847826090
• ISBN13: 9780847826094
• Release Date: June 2004
• Publisher: Rizzoli
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 1.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.1" x 1.2" x 7.3"

Customer Reviews

Brilliant Start

In 1888, when she was 26 and well before her first works were published, the writer Edith Wharton, with her husband and cousin, valet and maid, chartered a steam-yacht, 167 feet long, with a crew of 16, to sail through the Mediterranean for nearly three months visiting its ancient ports and islands. She documented this voyage in a private journal which has recently been "discovered" and now has been published, illustrated by the photographer Jonas Dovydenas, who over several years visited many of sites which Whatorn had described more than 100 years earlier. The book stands by itself as an extremely well written travel document with strongly honest opinons and vivid descriptions by a highly cultured young heiress. For the Wharton admirer, it also shows the young artist on the verge of launching a brilliant writing career. Many of the idioms associated with her work are on view here for the first time. The photographs are beautiful reminders of that storied landscape. Areas covered include Algiers, Malta, Syracuse, Palermo, Corfu, Rhodes, Smyrna, Mount Athos, and Dalmatia.