UPNE - Mysteries of Paris: by Marion Mainwaring (Uncle Dave's Sister)

UPNE - Mysteries of Paris: Marion Mainwaring Thu, 4 Jan 2007 16:37:38 -0500: "'[A] remarkable book . . . Mysteries of Paris is a great pleasure to read for its forensic flair, as well as for the abundant colorful detail it provides of Fullerton and his times.' ?Times Literary Supplement

The intriguing, hitherto unknown story of Edith Wharton's lover, a man of boundless charm and deceit.

It has long been known that Edith Wharton had an intense love affair around 1908. For years readers assumed that it was with Walter Berry, her friend since youth, until it was revealed that her lover was not Berry, but rather Morton Fullerton, an American living in Paris. Until now little has been known of Morton Fullerton except that he was a Harvard graduate, a Paris correspondent for the Times of London, and a friend of Henry James.

In this unusual detective story, Marion Mainwaring unfolds for her readers her pursuit of Fullerton and of the people, both high and low, who were part of his checkered life in France, America, and England. Her far-flung investigations take her to slums and chateaux, to talks with counts and viscounts, concierges, engineers, sculptors, diplomats, and, in the end, to the astonishing figure of Morton Fullerton.

Talented, intelligent, sophisticated, and ambitious, Fullerton also proved to be egotistical and unscrupulous, a cad and a con man, but his overwhelming personal charm attracted friends and lovers of both sexes. Mysteries of Paris uncovers, one by one, the details of his career as a writer and a spy, his love affairs with Wharton and other women, his close friendship with James, and his relations with Oscar Wilde, George Santayana, Paul Verlaine, Theodore Roosevelt, and many others.



MARION MAINWARING, who has lived in Paris and London for many years, has become well known as the author who completed Wharton's novel The Buccaneers (1993). A novelist in her own right, she wrote Murder in Pastiche and Murder at Midyears. She translated Youth and Age: Three Novellas by Ivan Turgenev and edited The Portrait Game, records of a parlor game played by Turgenev and his friends."