Inspired by Edith Wharton's Dining Room... And More

By Fran Hawthorne

Edith Wharton’s Dining Room Photo Credit - The Mount

I stood in Edith Wharton’s small, light-filled dining room at The Mount, her Berkshires mansion, right behind the oval-backed chair where she would typically sit next to Henry James. The room had peach-colored walls with lots of filigreed white trim, a marble fireplace, two sets of French doors, and a round table with six formal place settings. Closing my eyes, I pushed myself into an imaginary conversation between the two writers:

Wharton: I’m having some trouble deciding exactly what tone Newland Archer would take with his wife when talking about Countess Olenska. His wife can’t be totally oblivious, as time goes on.

James: Ah, but wasn’t willful obliviousness part of the expectations of polite society, after all?

Wharton: True...

If only I could have an adviser like Henry James at my own dinner table, night after night! What would I have asked him about the book I was then working on--the novel Her Daughter that has now been published:

Me: Should Alice defend herself more forcefully when her husband, Dan, accuses her of putting their daughter in a filthy childcare center?

James: Ah, but wasn’t Alice still too full of self-doubt at that time? Would she have the insight to realize how Dan was gaslighting her?

Hmm, my imaginary Henry James had a good point....

Fran at Wharton House - Author’s Photo

I mapped out this 10-day literary tour of New England in the summer of 2022, figuring that it would be both fun and inspiring. My husband and I calculated that we could reasonably drive from New York City to the Berkshires (Wharton), then Concord MA (the homes of Louisa May Alcott and Ralph Waldo Emerson, plus Walden Pond for Henry David Thoreau), on to Salem MA (birthplace of the “other” Hawthorne--Nathaniel), and back to New York via Hartford CT (Mark Twain). The itinerary also allowed for some non-literary visits.

Walden Pond - Author’s Photo

In fact, the trip inspired me far more intensely than I’d expected.

To touch the walls of the complicated, sprawling house where Twain lived with his family.

To look out the two windows flanking the odd semicircular table where Alcott wrote Little Women, seeing more or less the view she would have seen.

Alcott House - Author’s Photo

To stand beside the bed where Wharton wrote her books, on a portable desk. (She didn’t use the desk in her library for writing; that was for paying bills.)

I truly felt those writers. I felt them pulling together the components of their timeless characters and stories. I stood in the living room--on the actual floor--that Alcott used as the setting for the March sisters’ theatrical performances.

Naturally, I’ve been pondering more literary visits ever since that road trip. I spent a wonderful half-hour in Ernest Hemingway’s house in Key West, Florida in 2024, for instance. Yep, I could just see Ernest in his second-floor study, pounding away at his tiny, black, manual typewriter, the mounted animal head looming above him, no doubt tipping back a daiquiri.

Hemingway’s Key West Study - Author’s Photo

Last summer, I didn’t even need to travel beyond Manhattan, as The Morgan Library staged a special exhibit celebrating Jane Austen’s 250th birthday.

I stared at the round wooden table where Austen wrote most of her novels. Nestled against a wall of leaf-patterned wallpaper and set atop a three-legged base, the small table had barely enough room for a short stack of 8 1/2-by-11-inch sheets of paper and an inkpot.

“Where did she put her finished pages? Or the pages she threw out?” I asked the docent who was leading our tour.

The docent speculated that Austen had probably kept a leather portfolio at her feet. This would also be handy for quickly shoving pages inside when she wanted to leave.

Considering that I went through (cringe) a dozen major rewrites of Her Daughter, I tried to imagine copying by hand 326 pages of manuscript over and over 12 times. Dipping my quill pen into an inkwell every few minutes, even while the words raced ahead too fast in my mind. Without spilling any ink in my frustrated haste. And all of this in the dining room of my family’s house while my seven siblings talked, strode, and did chores around me.

Oh, and producing six full-length works of genius.

I hurried home to my trusty laptop, which can almost keep up with my thoughts and never spills ink.

I’ve been writing novels since I was four years old, although I was sidetracked for years by journalism. (That award-winning detour included eight nonfiction books plus writing for the New York Times, BusinessWeek, and more.) But I never abandoned my true love: My novel I Meant to Tell You (Stephen F. Austin State University Press) was a finalist for SCN’s Sarton Award and other honors. My third novel, Her Daughter, was published in January 2026 by Black Rose Writing.

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