Blog

When I saw two photos of Edith Wharton visiting the Bahia Palace of Marrakesh, adrenaline rushed through me. I am a historian, so I constantly seek out new documents that illuminate the past. In these black and white photos, Wharton was with her best friend and traveling companion Walter van Rensselaer Berry as well as eleven other men and women. They had all traveled to the southern Sahelian city in October 1917, after visiting a colonial fair in Rabat. In a dark tailored suit with a veiled hat, Wharton cocked her head in a distinctive manner.

I had wanted—in fact, deliberately outlined—a triumphant ending to my book tracing Edith Wharton’s trip to Morocco in 1917. As a grad student in the 1990s and early-2000s, I had lived in Morocco and France and traveled to Egypt, Tunisia, Mali and Mauritania. This...

This week, I am living out a century-old prediction of Edith Wharton.  In 1917, my Gilded Age doppelganger asserted that she was on “...a quick trip at a moment unique in the history of the country; the brief moment of transition between its virtually complete...

Riad Villa Blanche is a time capsule dating to the era when Edith Wharton visited Morocco.  At that time, Morocco was a Protectorate of France, and Hubert Lyautey its Resident General. Lyautey’s reign ended in 1925, and Morocco has been independent since 1956....