I have only watched the first episode of Julian Fellowes' The Gilded Age (on Sky Atlantic in the UK) but having read some of Edith Wharton and Harriet Beecher Stowe, the story already feels a little too familiar. Fellowes appears to have taken a few novels set around the 1880s, thrown them into a blender, seasoned with a dash of Downton Abbey and a drizzle of Upstairs, Downstairs and baked into a handsome multimillion dollar confection. My suspicion that this was not an original thought was confirmed when I checked the reviews. There was: What HBO's 'The Gilded Age' Owes Edith Wharton from The Atlantic. The Gilded Age Review: Julian Fellowes Does Edith Wharton from Time. Google even offers a shortcut: The Atlantic is scathing about Fellowes' debt to Wharton: "Wharton’s New York, fully in thrall to money, celebrity, and power, feels almost more feudal than Downton does. But The Gilded Age takes this teeming morass of a historical period and essentia...