| Title | : | The Buccaneers |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0140232028 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780140232028 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 406 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1938 |
Nan's new governess, Laura Testvalley, herself an outsider, takes pity on their plight and launches them instead on the unsuspecting British aristocracy. Lords, dukes, marquesses and MPs, it seems, not only appreciate beauty, but also the money that New York's nouveaux riches can supply.
A love story of love and marriage among the old and new moneyed classes, The Buccaneers is a delicately perceptive portrayal of a world on the brink of change.
The Buccaneers Reviews
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"First, the Romans had come. Then the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons. Then the Danes terrorized England for three centuries. Norman pirates took the country over in 1066. Five centuries later Turks raided the Thames and took prisoners to sell in the Libyan slave-market… But never had there been any phenomenon to match this… – this ‘invasion of England by American women and their chiefs of commissariat, the silent American men’…"
This is by no means a high seas adventure story and you won’t find any swashbuckling pirates within these pages. What you will find is a delightful and wholly absorbing story about a group of ‘new rich’ young ladies and their struggle to attain social status and suitable husbands in the complex society of 1870’s New York. Annabel St. George, her sister Virginia, Lizzy and Mabel Elmsworth, and Conchita Closson will find that they just don’t quite fit into the highest of social circles. Rather than vacationing at the fashionable Newport, they find themselves strolling the verandahs of the apparently less exclusive Saratoga – much to the dismay of their overly ambitious and scheming mothers.
Thank goodness for the likes of Miss Laura Testvalley who has been hired as governess to Annabel, or Nan. Miss Testvalley is a godsend indeed – more than just a teacher of letters, manners and music, she will help Nan navigate the tricky and unmerciful currents of her society. Nan is not your ordinary social ladder-climbing young woman. She is romantic and clever and has hopes and dreams beyond that of a marriage made simply with the goal of achieving rank and wealth. I do believe Miss Testvalley sees her own reflection in the young eyes of Nan. Miss Testvalley’s background and link to an impoverished family may not match that of Nan’s upbringing, but in those things that matter most in life – those of the mind and of the heart – Miss Testvalley is a true champion. I simply adored her steadfast affection and support of Nan and her well-being.
Now, when one doesn’t quite succeed amongst the fierce competition of young ladies in New York society, there is one solution – England. At a time when many of the British aristocracy still upheld their titles and legacy but lacked the funds to sufficiently maintain their lands and other holdings, new money from overseas was perhaps just the ticket to preserving such heritage. And now behold ‘the buccaneers’ – our young ladies from New York. Can they – and their superficial mothers – achieve what they intensely desire in this country? There now exists a whole new set of rules and customs to which they must conform. Nan finds herself in love with the land and the sense of history which it invokes. Maybe finally this is a place in which she can find true happiness.
"It was not the atmosphere of London but of England which had gradually filled her veins and penetrated to her heart. She thought of the thinness of the mental and moral air in her own home: the noisy quarrels about nothing, the paltry preoccupations, her mother’s feverish interest in the fashions and follies of a society which had always ignored her. At least life in England had a background, layers and layers of rich deep background, of history, poetry, old traditional observances, beautiful houses, beautiful landscapes, beautiful ancient buildings, palaces, churches, cathedrals. Would it not be possible, in some mysterious way, to create for oneself a life out of all this richness, a life which would somehow make up for the poverty of one’s personal lot?"
But what is a girl to do when presented with the attentions of Guy Thwarte – landholder and heir to Honourslove, a place towards which Nan feels herself somehow immediately attached, or the Duke of Tintagel – owner of the romantic and historical castle of Tintagel, a place steeped in the legends of King Arthur. How this plays out, you will have to find out for yourself! You will most likely root for Nan with as much devotion as did I and Miss Testvalley. You will nod in agreement with Edith Wharton’s subtle and witty scorn towards the customs and demands of both the New York upper crust as well as the British aristocracy. You will fall in love with the elegant prose which Wharton displays so flawlessly.
One important note regarding this novel which did not in the least affect my desire to read it – Edith Wharton passed away prior to finishing writing this. My version included an ending completed by Marion Mainwaring, a Wharton scholar. I was not able to distinguish a difference in writing style between the words of Wharton versus Mainwaring, but then I am not by any means a Wharton scholar, but simply an amateur reader who thoroughly appreciated the effort put forth by Mainwaring. However, I can’t help but wish that Wharton had survived to see this novel through to completion. One will never know exactly how she intended for this to end, but I was nevertheless quite satisfied. -
The Buccaneers is Edith Wharton’s last and uncompleted novel. She had written approximately 89,000 words before her death and the novel was printed in its incomplete form by her publisher. In 1993 Marion Mainwaring, a noted Wharton scholar, completed the story, in line with notes that Wharton had left behind. She did a good job, since there is no obvious break in the voice between the beginning of the book and the end, but it seems clear to me that no one, even a great scholar, could ever know exactly how Wharton would have ended her work. If someone was going to guess, I think Mainwaring was a good choice, but I can’t help wishing Wharton could have done it herself and that it were as pure a Wharton as
The Age of Innocence and
The House of Mirth.
Despite this, The Buccaneers is a masterful work of fiction, set in Wharton’s high-society world, and full of the angst and manipulation that makes me happy for just a moment not to have been among the fabulously wealthy, well-married women of the time. Love and marriage do not go together like a horse and carriage in Wharton’s world. Marriage is mostly an institution of convenience and profit, you get a name and I get money, and woe to the romantically inclined girl who stumbles into this world of harsh reality unawares.
It is the reality behind the mask in a Wharton that makes it so worthwhile to read her. She strips the conventions to the bone and calls them by name. She exposes what people are willing to do and become in an effort to climb a social ladder, where someone else is always contriving to knock them off or at least kick them down a rung. And, she is superbly adept at lending light to the less affluent who have to circle in this world and navigate its waters. One of her finest characters in The Buccaneers is Miss Laura Testvalley, a governess who knows her place and sees the world without any rose-colored glasses, but whose caring heart cannot resist loving and aiding her charge, Annabel St. George (Nan).
There is always the beauty of Wharton’s descriptive writing that would, alone, make me wish to read this book: It was dark when Folyat House loomed high and stately in Portman Square, light shining from its long rows of windows and torches flaming at the grand portal. Footmen jumped down from the barouche which had met the travelers at Paddington, opened the escutcheoned doors, and helped them out. Other footmen led them up steps and into an oval colonnaded lobby. The Glenloe girls’ eyes widened as the groom-of-the-chambers, attended by yet other footmen, conducted them into a great rectangular hall through an arch at the opposite end.” When I read that,I feel I am one of the Glenloe girls and can see the glamour of the hall and the bustle of the footmen providing their services to the titled and privileged in a stoic and efficient manner.
I loved seeing the five girls (who are the buccaneers) transform from innocent pawns in the game to active players. In the beginning, they are primarily spurred on by ambitious mothers, while they are, themselves, just happy to have a good time and attract the attention of the men. By the end, they are among the ones pulling the strings and conniving for power, and the wheat is separated from the chaff, as they say.
They change, even toward one another. “Virginia, who had seemed to Annabel so secure, so aloof, so disdainful of everything but her own pleasures, but who, as Lady Seadown, was enslaved to that dull half-sleeping Seadown, absorbed in questions of rank and precedence, and in awe--actually in awe--of her father-in-law’s stupid arrogance…”
Finally, they are seen, even by their husbands as pirates, conquerors, rulers who come to rule by stealth:
”What a gang of buccaneers you are!” he breathed to his wife.
“Buccaneers,” Lizzy reminded him gently, “were not notorious for paying fortunes for what they took.”
Several of these girls do pay heavily for what they take, and they pay more than money. Those who fail to toe society’s line pay a price and lose a lot, but those who adhere to it pay almost as much, if not more. Wharton does not traffic in happily ever after in her novels--people die, they are ruined, they are impoverished. I personally see the hand of Mainwaring in this novel most heavily in the lightness of the penalties exacted. I believe Wharton would have visited a harsher punishment on her characters in the end. She was unflinching when portraying the viciousness of society. She had seen it in her lifetime. She knew the costs. You need only think of Lily Bart to know that she did. I can’t help wondering, had fate allowed Wharton to finish this novel, if my dear Nan and Laura Testvalley would have been spared. -
I've fallen in love, readers!
It took me about 12 hours from start to finish to read the last of Wharton's novels, left unfinished for decades and then completed in Wharton's style by scholar Marion Mainwaring. As I mentioned earlier, I've watched the PBS series three times now and there's something about it that gets to me. Perhaps because it's sexier and funnier and looser than what one would expect from the era, and because [SPOILER ALERT:] its ending which actually arises from Wharton's notes, is decidedly un-Whartonian. I'm terribly moved by the idea that at the end of her life, Edith Wharton would decide to write a novel about a heroine who behaves in the exact opposite way of nearly all her other major characters, who--to put it quite frankly--doesn't give a shit about social convention and flouts it utterly. I like to think of it as the author's reconciliation to romance, her final, deathbed middle finger to the rules and hierarchies with which she had such a deeply-tortured relationships.
Reading The Buccaneers is a dream for those who like comedies-of-manners for their own sake. Wharton will never be Austen: she takes ten lines to explain the social relationships that Austen dispatches with a sentence (this, I think, is evidence of Wharton's psychic struggle with society). But the first two thirds of the book, written by Wharton without revision, each page dropped off the side of her bed as she finished it, are blithe, satirical, sexy and both funny and sad.
The many scenes where the characters forge connections over poetry and art as well Nan St. George's stifling marriage and post-marital sexual awakening make me feel as though this is Wharton's Persuasion. And like that novel and other novels with heavy autobiographical elements--Copperfield, The Song of the Lark, etc. it has an emotional immediacy that feels startling and gives it a value different from a more controlled, classically perfect novel.
Wharton's contrast of Laura Testevalley, who gives up on romance and sacrifices her chance of happiness so that Nan can run away with Guy Thwarte, and Nan, who finds happiness with Guy after having giving up on it in her role as duchess, fascinates: one feels that Wharton is both Laura, in middle age loosening her scruple, and Nan herself.
Mainwaring's best contributions are a number of concluding love scenes that are satisfying (if not as satisfying as the wheat-field fornication in the film ;)) and a deft weaving-in of the horribly sexist divorce laws of the time that existed to punish women, humiliate them, and treat them as property. Marital rape is legal, and Nan's refusal to "produce heirs" for her huband after becoming emotionally estranged from him is a pivotal plot point.
This was definitely the best read I've embarked on in a while. I couldn't recommend it enough for Wharton fans who have long desired a less "thwarted" ending for her characters. I'd add that picturing Greg Wise in the romantic leading role definitely added a lot to the reading experience.
http://unpretentiouslitcrit.blogspot.... -
I found a copy of this book in a used bookstore, and hesitated before finally caving and buying it. I loved The Age of Innocence, but (as I learned from reading the book jacket while in the store) The Buccaneers is unfinished. Wharton wrote about 89,000 words of the story before dying in 1937, and Wharton scholar Marion Mainwaring picked up where the book left off and finished the novel. There's a note at the end about how Mainwaring made some changes to Wharton's draft to account for later changes in the story (and she also removed some hella racist language), but for the most part, the first two thirds of the book are primarily Wharton's. I don't like the idea of reading unfinished stories, and I can't decide what irks me more: an unfinished novel like Suite Francaise, which didn't have an ending because Irene Nemirovsky died before she could finish it; or The Buccaneers, where another author is brought in to complete the draft. Either way, it makes for a frustrating experience.
That being said, Mainwaring does a pretty good job of continuing Wharton's novel, to the point where I couldn't tell where Wharton's writing ended and Mainwaring's began. Maybe if I was a more experienced Wharton reader I would have noticed discrepancies, but as far as I was concerned, it was a solid story.
The story opens in 1876 New York, where "new money" sisters Virginia and Annebel St. George are preparing to find husbands. They find that they can't compete with the old money families of New York, and, after one of their friends marries an English lord who was visiting America, decide to follow her to England. Guided by their British governess, Laura Testvalley, the girls make their mark on the London social scene. Two more American sisters join the St. George girls, and their group becomes known as "the buccaneers," fortune-hunting Americans invading London to snatch up all the eligible lords and dukes. Each of the four American girls ends up marrying into the aristocracy, with varied success.
The story wasn't as tightly constructed or engrossing as The Age of Innocence, but I still loved reading Wharton's perspective on the shallowness and complexity of high society in the 1800's. She also makes it clear, without needing to slam it in your face, how much it sucked to be a woman in this world. The two most engrossing characters were Miss Testvalley, a confirmed spinster who's given up all hope of finding a husband and throws herself into the job of finding good marriages for her charges; and Annabel St. George, who ends up making the best marriage and is completely miserable. Her efforts to make the best of her circumstances, knowing that she's completely trapped in this life that she chose, were heartbreaking and beautiful.
"To begin with, what had caused Annabel St. George to turn into Annabel Tintagel? That was the central problem! Yet how could she solve it, when she could no longer question that elusive Annabel St. George, who was still so near to her, yet as remote and unapproachable as a plaintive ghost?
Yes - a ghost. That was it. Annabel St. George was dead, and would therefore never be able to find out why and how that mysterious change had come about. ...
'The greatest mistake,' she mused, her chin resting on her clasped hands, her eyes fixed unseeingly on the dim reaches of the park, 'the greatest mistake is to think that we ever know why we do things. ...I suppose the nearest we can ever come to it is by getting what old people call "experience." But by the time we've got that we
re no longer the person who did the things we no longer understand. The trouble is, I suppose, that we change every moment; and the things we did stay." -
I have read most of Edith Wharton’s novels, but not The Buccaneers, perhaps because of an unconscious—and rather unsophisticated, when I think about it—distaste for unfinished works of fiction. (Stevenson’s wonderful Weir of Hermiston recently cured me of that.)
The Buccaneers was Wharton’s last novel, left unfinished at her death in 1937. Curiously, it was completed by a Wharton biographer and novelist, Marion Mainwaring, in 1993 (more on that later), so you can now read it “whole.”
One issue about publishing work left unfinished by the author—I remember much discussion of this with Italo Calvino—is that books may be published that would never have made it through a writer’s rigorous quality controls. I felt that a little reading The Buccaneers, which is not a bad novel at all (at least the portion written by Wharton), but which didn’t seem to me to be up to Wharton’s usual meticulous standard of finish. I recently read her short story, “Roman Fever,” and I was very struck by her Austen-like minimalism and formal control. The Buccaneers is much looser and more diffuse.
In terms of themes, the novel is in the Jamesian vein of “New World meets Old.” Specifically, it explores the social comedy, and tragedy, resulting from five feisty, new money, New York heiresses hitting London and snaffling up husbands, in the form of a series of titled chinless wonders. It seems a strangely belated subject to be writing about in the 1930s, and Wharton here shows little of the relentless incisiveness she did examining similar themes in The Custom of the Country (1913). It has the feel of a nostalgia piece, almost Downton Abbey at points (the TV series, not the superb Altman film). Although that’s perhaps a little unfair—there’s a nice, show stealing Wilkie Collins-like governess figure, Laura Testvalley, aka Testavaglia, daughter of a line of Italian revolutionaries, who rather lit up the novel for me in every scene she was in.
As for Marion Mainwaring’s continuation...probably the less said the better. All it demonstrates is how much stronger even a lesser work by a great writer is than the best effort of a well-meaning but misguided hack. It’s crude, crass, and gushing. The Buccaneers would have been much better served by being left as an intriguing, if crumbling ruin. -
The St. George and Elmsworth families are *new money* and looking for brighter prospects for their daughters in the marriage market so they hie off to England looking for Dukes and Earl with aging homes in need repairs that only cold hard cash can bring them. The young ladies make their splash, make their marriages and then no surprise, have to lie in those beds that they've made for themselves. Some are successful, others not so - despite a very promising beginning.
"But it's rather lonely sometimes, when the only things that seem real are one's dreams."
I really did enjoy this a lot, and Wharton excels as always at her descriptions of society's quirks and restrictions. This was Wharton's last novel, which was finished off by Marion Mainwaring based on plot outlines left by Wharton. I definitely noticed a difference towards the end where MM stepped in to finish, and like other reviews some of the first 2/3 don't have quite the polished feel of Wharton's earlier work. Still, fans of Wharton and this topic (American heiresses in London) should definitely give this one a go. Just don't expect The Age of Innocence or The House of Mirth. -
The Buccaneers proved to be an interesting bookend for the career of Edith Wharton.
Wharton had completed about two-thirds of The Buccaneers when she died in 1937. For decades, it appeared in “unfinished” form. But in the early ‘90s, Wharton expert Marion Mainwaring completed the book, based on Wharton’s own high level synopsis.
The Buccaneers proved to be an apt companion piece to Wharton’s most famous novel, The Age of Innocence. Set in the same time period, it focused on a group of “new money” girls who found themselves denied entry to the upper reaches of New York society. Instead, they crossed the Atlantic, where London found their brash charms a breath of fresh air. Marriage to a variety of nobles ensued.
Wharton’s idea was fairly genius. Dramatizing how a group kept out of “old” society in one country prospered by being the new blood that an even older social set in another cried out for provided an interesting extrapolation of themes the writer had explored in numerous of her works. The Buccaneers still was a drama of manners. The Americans faced differing levels of success in navigating the labyrinth of customs and expectations of Upper Class Brits. But unlike other novels where the newcomers were kept out, here they succeeded brilliantly. Fans of Downton Abbey may recognize the concept of a rich American becoming the wife of a British noble.
At its core, The Buccaneers was about the complicated romance of Nan St. George and Guy Thwarte. A brief encounter established a seed of sympathy between the duo. But Guy was obliged to go abroad and make the money needed to keep his family’s estate afloat. Nan entered an ill-advised marriage to a colorless Duke who couldn’t appreciate her unique sensibilities. The feelings that spark between Nan and Guy when they re-enter one another’s lives drive the drama of the final act.
In many ways, The Buccaneers is atypical of Wharton’s plots. For one, the star-crossed couple got that rarest of Wharton rewards: a happy ending. The duo transcended the blight on their reputations and ran off together. Prior Wharton heroines had only a life or regret and loss (or, occasionally, poverty-stricken death) as reward for their impulsive actions and questionable decisions. Nan got to be with the man she loved, even if the scandal produced would blow back on her family.
Nan also had something few Wharton heroines had: a sympathetic friend and advisor who cared more about Nan’s happiness than bowing to propriety. Nan’s governess, Laura Tetsvalley (daughter of an expat Italian family), filled the maternal role for Nan more capably than Nan’s own fairly useless mother. Laura made mistakes of her own along the way, but eventually elected to bear the brunt of Nan’s scandal on her own shoulders, allowing her former pupil to escape a life that made her unhappy.
The Buccaneers also is notable for how sympathetic its putative villains are. Ushant, the colorless Duke, set a lot of the unhappiness in motion. He married Nan not because he particularly valued her, but because he found her ignorance of his station appealing and thought he could mold her into an ideal wife. While that doesn’t value Nan’s virtues, it’s also not exactly hissable. The Duke was a product of his upbringing and only wanted his wife to learn her role and help perpetuate his line. But the story made clear that, while not warm, he wasn’t a bad person. The rules of British society at the time gave him the right to force his will on Nan, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to do that. Given that his wife left him after telling him she was in love with someone else, the fact that he tried to end the union in as quiet a manner as possible is rather commendable.
The Dowager Duchess was also a source of antagonism for Nan. But the writing does a good job of demonstrating that she was motivated by her sense of duty, to her son, his position and their family. You may not like her, but she’s understandable. Even a spoiled noblewoman who launched an unfounded scandal about Nan out of a fit of pique was more pathetic than evil.
Some of those differences might be attributed to Mainwaring. And yet she channels Wharton’s style almost seamlessly. And the plot developments were based on Wharton’s own plans for The Buccaneers. Mainwaring blends into Wharton’s work quite well. A reader could believe the finished book is the product of one voice.
For fans of Wharton’s more famous books, The Buccaneers is a thematic variation worth checking out.
A version of this review originally appeared on
www.thunderalleybcp.com -
Having seen the BBC production, I can honestly say I liked the book so much better, and that it was a strong 5 stars for me. This is the last book Edith Wharton wrote before she died in 1938, and it was finished according to her detailed outline and republished in 1993. The story is centered around five rich American young women, four of whom end up marrying into British society when they find their prospects limited in the United States. The main character is Annabel. When we meet her, she is 16 and her mother has just hired a British governess for her. That is to become one of the most important relationships in her life. We also get to know Virginia (Jinny), her older sister, Lizzy Elmsworth and her younger sister Mabel, their friends, and Conchita Closson, their fascinating friend. One summer, they meet Sir Richard Marable, the third son of a Marquess, who is smitten with and then marries Conchita. When it becomes clear that, because they are not of the traditionally monied class, but, instead, of the new, Wall St., monied class, the prospects of the remaining friends to enter society are limited, they travel to Britain to visit Conchita. Virginia ends up marrying into the same family. Annabel also ends up marrying, but even "higher," to Duke Tintagel, but the marriage goes badly. Lizzy ends up marrying an up-and-coming member of Parliament, and Mabel eventually marries one of the richest men in America. Eventually, Annabel discovers her true love, and we are treated to a description of British aristocracy manners and mores in the 1870's.
Wharton creates engaging characters and writes with great descriptiveness that keeps the story lines moving. She is an astute student of human nature. It was hard to put this book down. -
The Buccaneers is a romantic anti-romance novel, if that makes any sense. Five young American daughters of fortunate financial speculators, finding themselves excluded from the crustiest New York society, begin to marry into an extended family of English nobility. As attractive as marrying into the top tier of society initially seems, navigating their responsibilities to ancestral mansions, families and tenants brings unhappiness, particularly for the youngest, Nan, who has married a duke who wanted a bride he could mold. Nan realizes that she’s made a mistake in marrying the duke, but there is no way for her to return to her schooldays, and pursing her true love will be disastrous.
This story could be completely depressing (typical for Edith Wharton) if it weren’t for the fun of comparing it to the real-life drama of the Churchill family’s American heiress brides. I listened to
The Churchills: In Love and War back in February and March, and it’s clear that Wharton borrowed liberally from the sensational memoirs released by Consuelo Vanderbilt (married to the Duke of Marlborough) and Jenny Jerome Churchill (mother of Sir Winston Churchill). The result is that the book feels a little smutty, the way that reading a tabloid might.
If you don’t know anything about the disappointing fairy-tale marriages Wharton is referencing, I wouldn’t recommend this as a particularly fun or interesting read. Not that it was bad, exactly. It was just uneven. The depictions of the mothers in New York are from a comedy-of-manners, and the ruminations of Sad Nan come from a melodrama. Nan’s sister and friends basically disappear from the book halfway through, when it appeared from the beginning that they would have slightly larger roles. Wharton died before completing a first draft, so it’s possible that there would have been substantial editing. As it is, Marian Mainwaring made it a mostly cohesive story focused on Nan’s reclaiming her own identity. -
This seemed a bit lighter than others by Wharton that I've read. Perhaps that is because this was her last novel, and unfinished. She didn't live to revise, and I think this simply her first draft. It was completed by another author. Mainwaring did a good job of this as the transition was seamless, and it wasn't until I'd read the last page that I knew where Wharton left off and Mainwaring began.
That said, the ending is weaker than what I might expect from Wharton. As with other authors I've come to love, Wharton's endings tend toward the sadly ironic. I wasn't as invested in the character to whom that applies.
Even with that criticism, I thoroughly enjoyed this. I enjoyed it despite the fact that the synopsis on the back cover of this edition has a huge spoiler. However, an author only has one best novel, and, of course, for Wharton that is
The Age of Innocence. She has some others that are close seconds, and this falls below them. A liberal 4-stars from me, but it probably sits toward the bottom of that group. -
It's the 1870s, and the daughters of New York City's nouveau riche are being scorned by their social superiors. They are forced to vacation at Saratoga because they haven't gotten invitations to Newport. A clueless father humiliates his family by ensconcing them in a house on shlubby Madison Avenue rather than chic Fifth. Rejected at home, the four daughters set out for England to snare them some aristocratic husbands. They are the buccaneers.
Four stars for the portion Wharton wrote, which co-author Marion Mainwaring tells us is about 89,000 words. One star for the concluding chapters, written by Mainwaring. It just goes to show: Wharton is really, really difficult to copy, in every way: plotting, tone, style, idiom. Mainwaring's addendum was dull and clunky, like so much of random historical fiction. I don't know where the 89,000 word division came in the text, yet there was a point where I suddenly noticed that the Wharton magic was gone. Not coincidentally, it was accompanied by the types of romantic interactions between characters that Wharton would only hint at, but a modern writer would spell out for you.
I want to get hold of the 1938 edition, which doesn't contain Mainwaring's concluding chapters, and also contains the racial language Mainwaring removed for fear it would offend modern readers. The 1993 text is full of words like brown, and dusky, and someone sends a telegram inquiring about her future daughter-in-law: "Is she black?"
The bowdlerization left a bad taste in my mouth. Fear of offending should never cause words to be changed or passages to be excised.
Jottings:
I'm a little alarmed. Yes, another author finished this uncompleted work by Wharton. But it would be nice to see where Wharton's work ends and Mainwaring's begins. Also, the text is bowdlerized: some nasty racial language has apparently been removed. Now I'm going to have to read the 1938 edition to find out what Wharton really wrote. Finally, there is no attribution of the cover art. Big no-no! It's the Acheson Sisters, by John Singer Sargent, hanging at Chatsworth House. -
Books like this are so very difficult to review. I felt so deeply for Nan and I could understand how she felt and what she thought. Indeed, I could relate to her very well as her thinking process is similiar to mine.
My problem with the book is that in the end she makes a choice. When you read it it seems like a good choice. You want her to live and love. You want her to live happily ever after, to be with the man that she is passionately in love with.
And in most stories that would be wonderful. But in this story there is a slight problem.
She's already married.
The writing style is engaging, the plot is well-developed and fascinating (I finished it in two days.), and you love some characters and hate others. But somehow at the end of the book, despite being relieved that she will live happily ever after, you feel a slight tinge of guilt associated with that relief.
I hate reading books like this because I'm a romantic at heart and deep down inside I know that if I finished the book and she didn't end up with the man that she loved I would be furious. I love books where the girl and the guy come together in the end. When they're in love and live happily ever after. That's why books like this are so difficult for me...because sometimes what's right isn't what's "romantic". And I want love to prevail in the end.
Nan did what was right "romantically" but did she do the right thing "morally"?
Questions like that are bound to surface after finishing Edith Wharton's "The Buccaneers." -
Edith Wharton is an excellent writer. I felt compelled to keep reading. However, I feel that this story is "broken" which is good is good and evil is evil but evil wins. This is the second Edith Wharton book (The other book being The Age of Innocence) where I couldn’t identify with the protagonist. I’ve decided it’s because Edith Wharton doesn’t seem to have a Christian moral value system coming across in her books. She does a good job keeping up with the Modern value system of the times, but I am disappointed when there is no valuable life lesson learned.
-
Oh my God, if someone could resurrect the dead and had enough magic potion for one person, I would choose Madame Wharton. It devastates me that even if I visit the "W" shelf at the library a million times over, as if I were a pilgrim visiting a holy shrine, on my bleeding and torn knees, there will never be a new Wharton book propped there for me to read for the very first time. I guess I should be grateful that there are authors out there who inspire such devotion, dead or otherwise.
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After reading
The House of Mirth I was so depressed that I promised myself I'd never read another book by Edith Wharton, but this one turned out differently (thank god) and I couldn't put it down.
more soon but for now, it was a solidly good read. -
The synopsis for this 1938 edition for The Buccaneers (appearing above) is completely wrong! Who wrote that?! No swashbuckling pirates, here! Edith Wharton's "novel" was published as a lightly edited, incomplete manuscript in the year following her death. It was sure to have been her masterpiece!
The "Buccaneers" are 5 nouveau riche American girls who, steered by an English-Italian (cousin to artist/poet D.G. Rosetti) governess, "invade" the Bristish peerage in the 'seventies (1870's).
While later editions append with an ending written by a Wharton scholar, I am charmed that my local libray is still circulating this original 1938 edition! There is no ending; it's a cliffhanger prematurely left off amidst a failing marriage and budding romance. So why 5 stars??
The writing is superb. The British landscape is beautifully elaborated, in watercolor tones. The subject is fascinating: courtships spanning the improbable social/cultural divide between American upstarts and British aristocrats. And then there's the novelty of reading an unfinished work. The editor insists that Ms. Wharton was not finished developing several of her characters. The contrast between her well-developed characters and the more-transparent ones helps a modern reader appreciate qualities of "classic" literature. I universally recommend this forgotten masterpiece. I'm still deciding if I'll read the "finished" edition, as this one was surprisingly satisfying even in it's incompletion. -
An unfinished work finished with class.
I was wondering how this unfinished novel of Wharton would read with a modern writer taking up the task & I was pleased with it but kept wondering how Edith would have ended it. I loved this story & found the governess a memorable character not soon to be forgotten. The Buccaneers is an unfinished work by Edith Wharton (1862-1937) which was published as that in 1938 by her publisher. That version is not at this time available on Kindle but I would be interested in knowing how many changes were made until the XXIX. Wharton had written 89,000 words & the rest was finished by a Wharton scholar Marion Mainwaring in 1993 & soon after a TV mini series was produced from this book. I noticed a different ending feel than the past Wharton novels I have read but I have not read them all yet. I was very happy with this ending but due to the controversy from many who thought Wharton would have ended it differently. In 1995, Angela Mackworth- Young finished it with a different ending, and this is not available on Kindle either. Wharton wanted to write a book about the Gilded age of marriages between wealthy American heiresses & English nobility which at that time labeled as Buccaneers. In New York society many of the young girls were in a group labeled The Buccaneers. There are resemblances to Consuelo, Duchess of Marlborough, Lady Randolph Churchill & Consuelo Montagu, Duchess of Manchester. I had heard that Winston Churchill had ties to America but it was interesting to find out that his mother was born in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn -Jeanette Jerome -aka - Lady Randolph Churchill. The story tells of the match making, marrying for title & money. The differences in American & English women of the time & of both societies.The story tells of five girls & their mothers after having no success in finding husbands for their daughters in high society & lacking invitations to higher events given by more prominent families decide to do a "London season". In hope they might have better luck. Virginia, Lizzy, Mabel & Nan visit a American friend, Conchita recently wed to a nobelman. Excerpts- "Ushant must have two sons- three, if possible. But his wife doesn't seem to understand her duties. Yet she has only to look into the prayer-book ...But I've never been able to find out to what denomination her family belongs.""The greatest mistake," she mused, her chin resting on her clasped hands, her eyes fixed unseeingly on the dim reaches of the park, "the greatest mistake is to think that we ever know why we do things...I suppose the nearest we can ever come to it is by getting what old people call 'experience'. -
The content of The Buccaneers could well and wholly be summed up by the French proverb "L'argent ne fait pas le bonheur." Neither do the titles of nobility and everything that goes with it.
Wharton's choice of theme for this novel is twofold. First, it shows the collision of two civilisations, where the world of the blase British nobility, considered by itself to be the pinnacle of the excellence, is invaded by the American parvenus. This would be of no importance if the American intruders weren't "filthy rich" and the Brits weren't in desperate need of money to maintain their out-of-date Ancien Regime style of living.
The second theme Wharton addresses is the social position of the married women. Being completely dependent on a husband and his (good??) will, women were seen almost as a personal property of men. Their fate was not to be envied. Their reputation could be ruined with a few well-chosen words that were admitted to and valid in the court of law. Caught in mariages de convenance, they either had to settle down for a loveless and dull life or they could break away. Freedom, however, had to be paid dearly, and so it is understandable why most women chose the former "solution".
Edith Wharton, being herself part of the high society, excells in showing the fate of the married American "buccaneers" in the British society. In the part of the novel written by her, humour, dry witticism and irony blend into a mixture so familiar from her other works. It's only too bad that the same cannot be said about the concluding part, written by M. Mainwaring!!!!! -
Although this novel is unfinished and Wharton would have done a lot of revision, there is still a lot of her wonderful prose and it is very interesting to see her looking back at the 1870s from the 1930s, which in places allow her to be sexually franker than she could in her earlier works. The novel centres on a group of young American women who marry British men and struggle to fit into British high society, and there are some powerfully-drawn characters, including the heroine, Annabel ("Nan"), and her governess, Laura, who is related to the pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti and has a rebellious nature beneath her quiet surface.
When I picked up this copy of Edith Wharton's final unfinished novel, I didn't realise it had been completed by another writer, Marion Mainwaring. (Maybe I should have guessed this from the mention of it being a "complete edition" on the cover, but it might have been helpful if the publishers had added the second author's name!) I'll admit I didn't read very much of her continuation - there is no indication of where the break comes, but it is pretty obvious as her writing style is very different, and I didn't feel reading her section would add much to Wharton's subtle characterisation. I found Wharton's original text online with details of the outline she left of her plans for the rest of the novel, and that was enough for me. I would really like to give five stars for Wharton - or for her best passages - and one for the continuation. -
I hardly feel this book can be classified as an Edith Wharton -- she died before it was completed, and apparently even before it was fleshed out. The complete-r, one Marion Mainwaring (writing in 1993), stews the final chapters with injudicious parentheses, romance-novel prose (Nan is "a flower unfolding ... a rose in bloom") and exclamation points galore. God help us all.
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See discussion in the Reading for Pleasure group/Buddy Reads/July 2016
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I was already a fan of Wharton going into this book. She writes so beautifully and has such interesting characters. She certainly captures this particular period of time well. She wrote what she knew, and her own life experiences certainly play a role in parts of this story. I adored the first 29 chapters that she wrote. It reminded me a little of Downtown Abbey.
It’s such a shame that she died and did not finish the book though. While I know that Mainwaring was an expert on Wharton and followed her synopsis, we’ll never know exactly what she would have said. For me there was a clear shift in the voice and style for the last 12 chapters that Mainwaring wrote.
4.5 stars for Edith, 3 for Marion, so I made it 4 stars. -
Ce roman riche et foisonnant reprend le thème très prisé par Henry James de la rencontre entre la nouvelle Amérique et la vieille Europe. Cette opposition est encore renforcée par le choix de personnages féminins pour les Américains et de personnages presque exclusivement masculins pour les Anglais. Edith Wharton ne s’intéresse d’ailleurs que peu aux hommes dans ce récit, excepté les Thwarte, père et fils, confidents et amis respectifs de Miss Testvalley et d’Annabelle. Le roman se divise en quatre parties, chacune distante des autres de quelques années. On suit donc l’évolution de ces cinq jeunes filles pendant une période assez longue, qui permet à l’auteur de nous décrire la suite de ces mariages.
La rigidité des règles de la vie sociale constituent cette fois encore le ciment de l’histoire. Qu’il s’agisse de faire son entrée dans le monde, d’être courtisée ou bien encore de son comportement avec son mari, les héroïnes sont sans cesse confrontées à ce qu’elles devraient faire ou à la façon dont elles devraient agir, en vertu de règles ancestrales établies par la bonne société. Leur nationalité leur confère un statut d’étrangères qui les rend très hermétiques à ce code de bonne conduite. Cette excuse permet à Edith Wharton de montrer combien ces règles peuvent s’avérer nocives pour l’épanouissement d’un caractère fragile et irréconciliables avec la violence des sentiments à laquelle nous pouvons tous être confrontés. Chez Edith Wharton, il semblerait bien que la complexité de la vie se reflète dans les destins souvent tragiques de ses héroïnes. Pourtant, le destin des Boucanières est bien moins dramatique que celui de Lily Bart dans Chez les heureux du monde. Toutes ne connaîtront pas la déception d’Annabelle et la fin du roman nous offre quelques beaux exemples d’entente conjugale.
Ce roman a été plus qu’un coup de cœur : il entre sans conteste dans la short-list de mes romans préférés. Bruissement de robes, propos frivoles et éclats de rire en cascade ne parviennent pas à masquer la révolte d’Edith Wharton face à un monde corseté dans lequel elle ne s’est jamais retrouvée. La richesse de ce roman, l’exubérance de ses personnages et la palette des émotions qui s’y déploient, sous la plume claire et élégante de l’auteur, en font un moment de lecture incomparable. -
I really enjoyed reading this book and found it to be a very fast read. I was interested in it because I watched the BBC dramatization - which was heavily Americanized & modernized as it turns out. My chief exposure to Edith Wharton was the very short and quite depressing "Ethan Frome." I found that to be written in quite an impenetrable style and was turned off of her for years - until I saw the film and came across a copy of the book in a used bookstore.
The way she writes in "The Buccaneers" is really fantastic - she manages to show things from the perspectives of different characters - even going into the point of view of a particular character for an entire chapter. Sadly, she died before she finished this and another author finished off the book based on her notes.
I much prefer the book to the film because it is really of a cloth with the way Edith Wharton talks about the values and interactions of these social classes. I even found it interesting how she referenced changing clothing styles (I could hear the old ladies saying "young girls these days!! pantalettes? oh dear!").
Her character development was really fantastic - I got a very clear sense of who these people were and their motivations, how they spoke and behaved. Such a better story than what the film presented! -
Lots of fun and often overlooked, this chronicles the marriage prospects of four daughters of nouveau riche Americans who hope to land cash-poor English aristocrats. After all, new fortunes can’t buy entrance to New York society, but the doors have to swing wide open if the families can boast a duke for an in-law. But can a titled marriage bring happiness? Of course not (at least not always), but the individual journeys make for great reading.
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This book was finished by another author and frankly I just skimmed at end. I love Edith Wharton's writing but I think it was a mistake to let someone else finish this book. I thought the difference in writing styles was very obvious and it was a big let-down. The writing that I take to be Mainwaring's reads like a bad period romance.
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L'ultimo romanzo di Edith Wharton, rimasto incompiuto, racconta la storia di alcune ragazze americane, ricche ma non di antica famiglia e perciò rifiutate dalla buona società newyorchese, che partono per il Regno Unito alla ricerca del successo in una società più gerarchica e antica, ma anche più bisognosa dei soldi dei nouveaux riches di Wall Street.
Come molti hanno fatto notare, il romanzo mette molta carne al fuoco (addirittura cinque personaggi principali, che poi perlopiù abbandona concentrandosi su due o tre), corre molto veloce con la trama e dà l'impressione, in parte anche stilisticamente che, se la Wharton non fosse morta nel frattempo, sarebbe stato significativamente rivisto e modificato. Io l'ho trovato accattivante e ben scritto ma privo della compostezza e del tono malinconico e allo stesso tempo ironico degli altri suoi romanzi, e la Wharton meno a suo agio tra i nobili inglesi rispetto alla vecchia New York in cui era nata.
Tutto sommato però una buona lettura, se non fosse che l'edizione che ho letto offre, senza soluzione di continuità con le pagine scritte dalla Wharton, un finale scritto da una certa Marion Mainwaring, che conclude il romanzo in un modo che non posso definire altro che un abominio.
Leggendo qualche articolo sulla faccenda (questa versione del libro venne pubblicata nel 1993), leggo che Mainwaring, alle critiche ricevute su questa sua conclusione, rispose le seguenti parole, che penso si commentino da sole:
"The argument that she was a great writer and how dare I? Well, I don’t think she was always a great writer, at least not as great as some. I wouldn’t have attempted this with a George Eliot or a Jane Austen novel. … Edith Wharton was not at her stylistic best here; that made it easier for me."
Nonostante la (a mio parere sciatta se non disonesta) mancanza di indicazioni su quando esattamente si smette di leggere Wharton e si inizia a leggere Mainwaring, io mi sono resa conto quasi subito che qualcosa non andava, nonostante avessi iniziato il libro convinta che le pagine concluse da qualcun altro fossero molte meno di quelle che sono effettivamente (più del 20% del romanzo): la trama diventa qualcosa di stupido e a tratti grottesco, con personaggi che si mettono a fantasticare sulla possibilità di uccidere un duca inglese in un incidente di caccia per favorire la propria ascesa sociale, e con l'apparizione in scena nientemeno che di Dante Gabriel Rossetti; i dialoghi e i monologhi interiori sono di una bruttezza imbarazzante, che non accetterei nemmeno in una soap opera: qualcuno dichiara a voce alta "I'm in love!"; una delle protagoniste è triste e pensa che vorrebbe tanto un "bear hug" da parte del padre, e in un momento precedente, dopo aver discusso col marito, dichiara che lui era "outraged. Now I understand the word. He was beyond rage".
È impossibile confondere la prosa della Wharton, raffinata, elegante, composta, caustica e allo stesso tempo ricca di comprensione per i suoi personaggi, per questa... roba. Per non parlare della assoluta incomprensione della poetica generale dell'autrice, come mostrato dal modo in cui Mainwaring conclude la storyline principale.
Se avessi scritto una cosa del genere a completamento di un romanzo di Edith Wharton (che personalmente penso sia senza alcun dubbio al livello della Austen e della Eliot), non sarei mai più potuta uscire di casa per l'imbarazzo.
E vi spoilero il finale, che è la degna conclusione, per così dire, di questa impresa: -
This might be an odd start to Wharton, but the subject matter intrigued me after having read a non-fiction book about the very phenomenon Wharton talks of here (American heiresses who, finding no entrance into the very rigid New York social scene, instead invaded the British aristocracy). The Buccaneers is unfinished, but Wharton reads like a Victorian Austen, fully as knowing about human nature, and almost as ready to take the piss out of everybody though not quite. I really enjoyed it and it is a great shame it was never finished. However, there's plenty more where that came from so I have something to look forward to at least.
