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The Letters of Edith Wharton to Anna Bahlmann
Yale University Press
June 2012
On Sale: June 5, 2012
336 pages ISBN: 0300169892 EAN: 9780300169898 Kindle: B0083SO4B2 Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Biography
An exciting archive came to auction in 2009: the papers and
personal effects of Anna Catherine Bahlmann (1849–1916), a
governess and companion to several prominent American
families. Among the collection were one hundred thirty-five
letters from her most famous pupil, Edith Newbold Jones,
later the great American novelist Edith Wharton. Remarkably,
until now, just three letters from Wharton’s childhood and
early adulthood were thought to survive. Bahlmann, who would
become Wharton’s literary secretary and confidante, emerges
in the letters as a seminal influence, closely guiding her
precocious young student’s readings, translations, and
personal writing. Taken together, these letters, written
over the course of forty-two years, provide a deeply
affecting portrait of mutual loyalty and influence between
two women from different social classes. This correspondence reveals Wharton’s maturing sensibility
and vocation, and includes details of her life that will
challenge long-held assumptions about her formative years.
Wharton scholar Irene Goldman-Price provides a rich
introduction to My Dear Governess that restores Bahlmann to
her central place in Wharton’s life.
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