Books: Public Triumph, Private Pain THE LETTERS OF EDITH WHARTON Edited by R.W.B. Lewis and Nancy Lewis; Scribner's; 654 pages; $29.95

On Nov. 27, 1909, a famous American author temporarily staying in Paris wrote a note to the local correspondent for the Times of London: "Cher ami -- Can you arrange, some day next week -- before Wednesday -- to bring, or send, me such fragments of correspondence as still exist?" The writer continues, "In one sense, as I told you, I am indifferent to the fate of this literature. In another sense, my love of order makes me resent the way in which inanimate things survive their uses!" Edith Wharton, then 47, was referring to her love letters in the possession of Morton Fullerton, a charming rotter who alternately pursued and ignored her. She was also, and none too subtly, trying to make her unpredictable suitor do something -- anything. But Fullerton did not send back his married lover's mail, then or later, after the affair had finally sputtered out. In 1980 some 300 of these "inanimate things" turned up for sale and were bought by the University of Texas at Austin. Most of those included in The Letters of Edith Wharton appear in print for the first time.

The Wharton-Fullerton correspondence makes this book more than simply a companion to R.W.B. Lewis' Pulitzer-prizewinning Edith Wharton: A Biography (1975). Her affair with the journalist was no secret to intimate friends or later biographers, but her private responses to it were. And the dignified vulnerability she displayed during this period softens the austere image she cultivated during her 75 years. The regal bearing and the profile with its generous, slightly prognathous jaw remain intact. It is now possible to see with what effort, and after what struggles, she held her head so high.

Wharton's letters offer a look at the private pains of a publicly triumphant life. Born during the Civil War, Wharton flourished until almost the beginning of World War II. She inherited considerable wealth and earned a great deal in addition by her writing; such novels as The House of Mirth, The Custom of the Country, Ethan Frome and The Age of Innocence were critical and commercial successes. She became so formidable a literary icon during the 1920s that F. Scott Fitzgerald, invited to meet her, drank more than was advisable to steady himself before his audience with the great lady. As a result, he told off- color jokes. Wharton noted in her diary that evening: "To tea, Teddy Chanler and Scott Fitzgerald, the novelist (awful)."