Last Things

This chapter picks up with two “delightful” weeks that Edith, Manly, and Mrs. Patrick spent in Spain in January 1935. The chapter then focuses on Manly’s very real fear that the edition was about to lose its funding. In the nick of time he found money for 1936, but shortly after reaching London Edith had a heart attack. After her return to Chicago in September 1936 she was in and out of hospitals and nursing homes for the rest of her life. Two days before her death she handed Manly her chapter on “Early and Revised Versions of the Canterbury Tales.” She died on 23 May 1938. Her ashes are in Oak Woods Cemetery, a short way south of the University of Chicago. She never saw the eight-volume edition.