The Eyes of the World was published by the Book Supply Company in 1914, and it is Wright’s most sustained meditation on the relationship between art, commerce, and moral integrity. Aaron King is a young painter of genuine talent who retreats from the corruptions of New York to the mountain wilderness above a fictional California resort town (modeled on Pasadena/San Bernardino).
In the mountains, King must choose between two paths: he can paint what wealthy patrons want to buy (flattering portraits, decorative landscapes, fashionable subjects) and achieve commercial success, or he can paint what he sees truthfully (the real landscape, the real people, the uncomfortable truths about the society he lives in) and risk poverty and obscurity. The “eyes of the world” — the judgment of conventional society — are always watching, always demanding conformity.
Wright uses the painter’s dilemma as a transparent allegory for his own situation as a popular novelist: he was enormously successful commercially but ignored or mocked by the literary establishment, and the tension between popularity and artistic integrity clearly tormented him. King’s resolution — to paint truth regardless of commercial consequences — represents Wright’s own ideal, if not always his practice.
Collecting The Eyes of the World
First edition (Book Supply Company, Chicago, 1914): Cloth binding.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $40–$120
- Without jacket: $8–$20