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This picture of Edith Wharton's close friend Henry James was painted by Jacques-Emile Blanche in 1908. Her circle of literary and artistic friends also included William Dean Howells, the French novelist Paul Bourget, literary critic Percy Lubbock, and art critic Bernard Berenson. Reviewers at that time and for some years to come would compare Wharton and James as writers, and her novel The Reef (1912) is Jamesian in tone. One of her great works of this period is The Custom of the Country (1913).
The two Whartons (until their divorce in 1913) and James would often travel together, and Edith Wharton visited James at his home, Lamb House, in Rye, England. Wharton traveled extensively in all the countries of Europe, and she also wrote about her travels in Morocco (In Morocco, 1920). Among her travel writings is A Motor-Flight through France (1908).
Wharton traveled by car (she called one of her cars "Hortense" and always rode with a chauffeur) in the days when traveling by automobile was an adventure in itself. .