Approximately 400 letters have been selected. Among Wharton's longtime friends and correspondents were Bernard Berenson, the distinguished Italian Renaissance art connoisseur and historian, the novelist Henry James, and the American journalist Morton Fullerton with whom Wharton shared an extraordinary love affair that led from passion and fulfillment to torment and grief. Includes an Index.

(Key Words: Edith Wharton, Henry James, Bernard Berenson, William Morton Fullerton, Letters, Howard Overing Sturgis, George Santayana, Theodore Roosevelt, Charles Eliot Norton, Percy Lubbock, Gaillard Lapsley, Mary Cadwalader Jones, Aldous Huxley, Charles Du Bos, Jane Clark, William Crary Brownell, Mary Berenson, Henry Adams, Correspondence).