Book summary

In 1888, when Edith Wharton was 26, she and her husband spent $4000 to charter a 167-foot yacht, the Vanadis, for a cruise through the Aegean and the Mediterranean, starting in Algiers and stopping in Tunis, Malta, Sicily, Corfu, and various places in Turkey, Greece, and Montenegro. En route, Wharton kept a detailed diary. Still unpublished when it was discovered in a French library in 1991, the account of the cruise is important because it reveals a great deal about the young writer--showing not only her inborn snobbery and elitist preferences but her fascination with new sights, her intrepid sense of adventure, and her empathy with people she encounters--and about the world of 1888, in particular the position of women, in which Wharton had a strong interest.