MY DEAR GOVERNESS: THE LETTERS OF EDITH WHARTON TO ANNA BAHLMANN. Ed. Irene Goldman-Price. New Haven: Yale UP, 2012. xiii + 336 pp. $30.The collected letters of Edith Wharton (1868-1937) to Anna Bahlmann (1849-1916) shed light on many dimensions of Wharton's life, as Irene Goldman-Price contends in her introduction, where she claims that these letters offer an unprecedented view of young Edith Jones's emotional and intellectual development as well as her family life; they demonstrate her growing vocation as a woman of letters practicing in virtually every genre (ix-x). Bahlmann, the New York-born daughter of German immigrants, was employed by the Jones family to instruct young Edith in German. Just thirteen years Wharton's elder, Bahlmann was Edith's instructor for a remarkably short period of time during the fall and winter of 1873-74. Thereafter, Bahlmann worked with her pupil sporadically, primarily during the Jones family's winters in New York; she also occasionally traveled with the family, acting as a chaperone and governess for short periods. The brevity of this initial period and the four decades of correspondence that would follow reveal an unlikely and compelling story, one of mutual affection and intellectual common ground such that, according to Goldman-Price, Bahlmann became a touchstone for all literary endeavor, offering a cultivated mind against which Edith could test her literary judgments (26).The letters, which were auctioned in 2009 and purchased by Yale University's Beinecke Library, add dimension to our knowledge of Wharton's life and early aspirations. While Wharton's voracious learning has long been emphasized by scholars of her work, she was believed to be virtually untaught until the revelations contained in this correspondence. The Bahlmann letters demonstrate how deliberately and thoroughly Wharton pursued the world of letters, along with the depth of her intellectual connections with those who bolstered her interests, who read her early poetry, and who offered her suggestions about reading as well as writing (as Bahlmann did). Others in Wharton's life, some more prominent and worldly, would fulfill similar roles later in life, both challenging and inspiring her, but Bahlmann was clearly central to the young writer's beginnings.Wharton's letters to Bahlmann vividly reveal her loyalty to a teacher with whom she remained connected until Bahlmann's death from cancer in 1916, at which time Wharton purchased the gravestone and paid Bahlmann's funeral expenses. In its length and intensity, their relationship presents a bond that equaled or surpassed the bonds that Wharton shared with family members (particularly her brothers). The early letters, written when Wharton was twelve, reveal an appealingly chatty and precocious youth with a tremendous appetite for learning. Many letters to Bahlmann are informal and affectionate, especially at the beginning of the correspondence, when Wharton wrote to her Tonni, penning letters that typically concern art shows, theatrical productions, and books of all kinds, especially those featuring poetry, history, philosophy, and drama. Young Edith's delight in an intellectual companion is clear at such moments, leading Goldman-Price to question Wharton's autobiographical narrative of herself as an autodidact (6-7). Bahlmann appears as both teacher and peer early in their correspondence, when she seemingly wrote to Edith in German to facilitate her pupil's command of the language. Wharton's commitment to learning multiple languages is clear in her letters; she describes teaching herself some Spanish and hoping to acquire a tutor for her study of Greek, all the while quoting German (97).Young Edith critiqued much of what she read, from Maria Edgeworth's writing, which she admired, to the works of George Sand and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, both of whom she found exasperating. In a letter from 1889, Wharton writes about her commitment to the medium of language itself, anticipating a sympathetic reading from Bahlmann: After all, I don't believe there is any greater blessing than that of being pierced through & through by the splendour or sweetness of words, & no one who is not transfixed by 'Die Sonne tont nach alter Weise,' or 'thick as Autumnal leaves that strew the brooks' has known half the joy of living. …