A Motor Flight Through France [Hardback]by Edith WhartonThis book is OUT OF PRINT You may be able to find a copy at ABE Books Description of A Motor Flight Through FranceEdith Wharton's travel writing, though less well-known than her fiction , exhibits the same remarkable combination of graceful description and acute, ironic observation.In A Motor-Flight through France, first published in 1908, Wharton takes pleasure in the novelty of the motor car, and the freedom it gives her to choose her own route, unlike travelling by train. As a motorist she gains, 'the truest initiation of travel, the sense of continuity, of relation between districts.' She is aware that speed makes her journeys very different form the leisurely progress of previous travellers, and that she might miss some details, but points out that 'opportune' punctures provide frequent occasions to look around in unexpected places. Her observations are witty and personal - the Gothic tomb of the cardinals at Rouen inspires a digression on the subject of noses - and like her occasional passenger, Henry James, she is intelligently appreciative of both architecture and scenery, though not always uncritical. Above all, Wharton believes that the traveller must have 'reverence for the accumulated experiences of the past' and is conscious that she comes from 'a land that has undertaken to get on without the past, or to regard it only as a feature of aesthetic interest, a sight to which one travels rather than a light by which one lives.' Title Information
Write a review of this book Customer Reviews from AmazonContents of A Motor Flight Through FrancePart One1. Boulogne to Amiens 2. Beauvais and Rouen 3. From Rouen to Fountainebleau 4. The Loire and the Indre 5. Nohant to Clermont 6. In Auvergne 7. Royat to Bourges Part Two 1. Paris to Poitiers 2. Poitiers to the Pyrenees 3. The Pyrenees to Provence 4. The Rhone to The Seine Part Three 1. A Flight to the North-East Your recently viewed titles |
Related Categories
|
Shopping basket
