Customer Reviews

A MOTOR-FLIGHT THROUGH FRANCE

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Edith Wharton has written two books worthy of being read by everyone, "The Age of Innocence" and "A Motor-Fight Through France." Ms. Wharton was a wealthy New Yorker and in a day when most could not afford to do so (before WWI) she set out by automobile with her husband and her friend Henry James to tour the French countryside. This might not seem a "big deal" today, but visualize a country where one could only travel by train and out of the way places were inaccessible except by wagon or oxcart.

The book contains descriptions of several trips. One trip takes the reader in a big swoop from northern France to southern France and back. She visits the home of Madam Dudevant (George Sand) and a number of churches and other buildings of historic interest. There are only a few old photographs in the book, so one might need to consult another source to fully enjoy her descriptions of various places. I've taken a few courses on French arcitecture and visted France several times and I still had to consult other books--but it's worth it. Some of the French countryside has been altered and some of the older places are gone. The most memorable visits are to Nohant, home of George Sand. It is obvious Ms. Wharton considered Sand a spiritual mentor.

In her other books and articles, Ms. Wharton covered Spain, Italy and points of interest in the Mediterranean. She later visited the front during WWI and became a war correspondent for an American newspaper. This book covers the halcyon days before the carnage when the world was younger and more innocent.

This book is a fascinating look into the early days of automobile touring and, understandably, a very different view of France than the traveller sees today. However I was not aware from its Amazon description that this was an enlarged photocopy of the Scribner 1908 edition of Edith Wharton's A motor flight through France. The print has bcome so furred in the process of enlargement that it is extremely unpleasant to read. The illustrations are almost useless.
If Amazon is going to sell Bibliolife and other photocopied reproductions, could they please ensure they are described accurately on their web page. I would never buy another.

A book of this title ought to be about the wind rushing through one's hair as the countryside flashes past. Instead we read only a tedious & obsessive account of church architecture, which renders the book's title extraordinarily misleading. It puzzles me how a writer with such immense human understanding can write a travel book with absolutely no mention of any encounter another human being; either native Frenchmen or her fellow traveller, Henry James. She wasn't to know this since cars were such new technology, but travel in cars cannot do otherwise than totally seal off the traveller from his environment. This was a huge and sadly missed opportunity to describe travel at the dawn of the motoring era: before traffic jams, before towns bordered by terrible bland industrial parks and out of town shopping malls, before ring roads, freeways, and ubiquitous Macdonalds.