Bernard Berenson

Edith Wharton led one of the most privileged lives of any major American novelists. She lived free of money worries because of inherited income. She had houses in rich areas, passions for gardens and interior decoration, toured Europe in cars and yachts, and despised second-class hotels (Franzen). Wharton lived a high profile life unlike any other authors, a comfortable life that most people today want to live. She came from a long line of important names in the American, specifically the New…

Isabella Stewart Gardner was one of America’s most remarkable female patrons of the arts during the Victorian era. A leading art collector, she fulfilled a dream to share her treasures from around the world when she founded the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts. Gardner did not conform to the conservative code of conduct expected of Boston matrons at the time and instead, is remembered for having a “zest for life, an energetic intellectual curiosity and a love of travel”…