Read complete books and articles on: Edith Wharton

Wharton, Edith Newbold Jones - 1862–1937, American novelist, b. New York City, noted for her subtle, ironic, and superbly crafted fictional studies of New York society at the turn of the 20th cent. The daughter of a socially elect family, she was educated privately in New York and in Europe. In 1885 she married Edward Wharton, a Boston banker; after the first few years of marriage Edward Wharton became mentally ill, and the burden of caring for him fell upon his wife. Finally, in 1913, after she had settled permanently in France, Edith Wharton terminated the marriage by divorce.

Her early stories and tales were collected in The Greater Inclination (1899), Crucial Instances (1901), and The Descent of Man (1904); somewhat narrow in scope, they nevertheless show the unity of mood and the lucid, polished prose style of her more mature works. Much of her writing bears a resemblance to the fiction of Henry James, who was her close friend. However, the similarities are superficial, and in her best and most characteristic novels—The House of Mirth (1905) and The Age of Innocence (1920; Pulitzer Prize)—she asserts herself as a distinctive artist. Recreating the atmosphere of the unadventurous, ceremonious upper-class society of New York, she depicts in these and other works the cruelty of social convention, the changing fashions in morality, and the conflicts that arise between money values and moral values.

In the novella Ethan Frome (1911)—one of her best-known, most successful, and least characteristic works—Wharton evokes the tragic fate of three people against the stark background of rural New England. Among her many other novels are The Valley of Decision (1902), a historical novel of 18th-century Italy; The Custom of the Country (1913); Hudson River Bracketed (1929) and its sequel, The Gods Arrive (1932); and an unfinished work, The Buccaneers (1938). Collections of her short stories include Xingu and Other Stories (1916), Certain People (1930), and Ghosts (1937). Wharton is also the author of travel books (e.g., Italian Backgrounds, 1905), literary criticism, and poetry. In 1915 she was awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honor by the French government for her services during World War I.

Bibliography

See her collected stories (2 vol., 2001); her autobiography, A Backward Glance (1934, repr. 1964); her letters, ed. by R. W. B. Lewis (1988); biographies by L. Auchincloss (1971), R. W. B. Lewis (1975, repr. 1985), S. Benstock (1994), and E. Dwight (1994); studies by M. B. McDowell (1976, repr. 1991), C. G. Wolff (1977, repr. 1995), E. Ammons (1980), G. Walton (rev. ed. 1982), G. S. Rahi (1983), D. Holbrook (1991), B. A. White (1991), K. A. Fedorko (1995), C. J. Singley (1995), J. Dyman (1996), J. Beer (1997), S. B. Wright (1997), A. R. Tintner (1999), and H. Hoeller (2000).

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15 of the Best Books and Articles on: Edith Wharton

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1.

A Historical Guide to Edith Wharton » Read Now
by Carol J. Singley. 302 pgs.

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Edith Wharton, arguably the most important American female novelist, stands at a particular historical crossroads between sentimental lady writer and modern professional author. Her ability to cope with this collision of Victorian and modern sensibilities makes her work especially interesting...
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Edith Wharton, arguably the most important American female novelist, stands at a particular historical crossroads between sentimental lady writer and modern professional author. Her ability to cope with this collision of Victorian and modern sensibilities makes her work especially interesting. Wharton also writes of American subjects at a time of great social and economic change-Darwinism, urbanization, capitalism, feminism, world war, and eugenics. She not only chronicles these changes in memorable detail, she sets them in perspective through her prodigious knowledge of history, philosophy, and religion. A Historical Guide to Edith Wharton provides scholarly and general readers with historical contexts that illuminate Wharton's life and writing in new, exciting ways. Essays in the volume expand our sense of Wharton as a novelist of manners and demonstrate her engagement with issues of her day.
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2.

Edith Wharton » Read Now
by Robert Morss Lovett. 91 pgs.

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...MODERN AMERICAN WRITERS EDITH WHARTON EDITH WHARTON By ROBERT MORSS LOVETT ROBERT M. McBRIDE...the United States of America Published 1925 EDITH WHARTON THE decade of the...
3.

Ethan Frome » Read Now
by Edith Wharton, Elaine Showalter. 125 pgs.

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`It was not so much his great height that marked him ... it was the careless powerful look that he had, in spite of a lameness checking each step like the jerk of a chain.' Set against the bleak winter landscape of New England, Ethan Frome tells the story of a poor farmer, lonely and downtrodden...
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`It was not so much his great height that marked him ... it was the careless powerful look that he had, in spite of a lameness checking each step like the jerk of a chain.' Set against the bleak winter landscape of New England, Ethan Frome tells the story of a poor farmer, lonely and downtrodden, his wife Zeena, and her cousin, the enchanting Mattie Silver. In the playing out of this short novel's powerful and engrossing drama, Edith Wharton constructed her least characteristic and most celebrated book. In its unyielding and shocking pessimism, its bleak demonstration of tragic waste, it is a masterpiece of psychological and emotional realism. In her introduction the distinguished critic Elaine Showalter discusses the background to the novel's composition and the reasons for its enduring success.
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4.

The House of Mirth » Read Now
by Edith Wharton, Martha Banta. 330 pgs.

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Since its publication in 1905 The House of Mirth has commanded attention for the sharpness of Wharton's observations and the power of her style. A lucid, disturbing analysis of the stifling limitations imposed upon women of her generation, Wharton's tale of Lily Bart's search for a husband of...
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Since its publication in 1905 The House of Mirth has commanded attention for the sharpness of Wharton's observations and the power of her style. A lucid, disturbing analysis of the stifling limitations imposed upon women of her generation, Wharton's tale of Lily Bart's search for a husband of position in New York Society, and betrayal of her own heart, transformed the traditional novel of manners into an arrestingly modern document of cultural anthropology. With incisive contemporary analysis, the introduction by a leading scholar of American literature updates this increasingly important work.
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5.

The Age of Innocence » Read Now
by Edith Wharton. 366 pgs.

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...The AGE of INNOCENCE -ii- -iii- COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY THE PICTORIAL REVIEW COMPANY PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA...
6.

Student Companion to Edith Wharton » Read Now
by Melissa McFarland Pennell. 196 pgs.

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7.

Edith Wharton's Prisoners of Consciousness: A Study of Theme and Technique in the Tales » Read Now
by Evelyn E. Fracasso. 142 pgs.

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The metaphor of life as prison obsessed Edith Wharton, and, consequently, the theme of imprisonment appears in most of her 86 short stories. In the last several decades, critical studies of Wharton's fiction have focused on this theme of imprisonment, but invariably it is related to biographical...
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The metaphor of life as prison obsessed Edith Wharton, and, consequently, the theme of imprisonment appears in most of her 86 short stories. In the last several decades, critical studies of Wharton's fiction have focused on this theme of imprisonment, but invariably it is related to biographical considerations. This study, however, is not concerned with such insights and influences; rather, it concentrates on Wharton's skill as a craftsman in consciously and carefully fitting her narrative techniques to the imprisonment theme. Representative tales from Wharton's early period (1891-1904), her major phase (1905-1919), and her later years (1926-1937) have been examined and divided into four categories: individuals trapped by love and marriage, men and women imprisoned by the dictates of society, human beings victimized by the demands of art and morality, and persons paralyzed by fear of the supernatural.
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8.

The Faith of Our Feminists: A Study in the Novels of Edith Wharton, Ellen Glasgow, Willa Cather » Read Now
by Josephine Lurie Jessup. 128 pgs.

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...A Study in the Novels of EDITH WHARTON, ELLEN GLASGOW, WILLA CATHER...Votaries 9 II. Edith Wharton: Drawing-Room Devotee 14...Sketch and Bibliography Edith Wharton 119...
9.

After the Fall: The Demeter-Persephone Myth in Wharton, Cather, and Glasgow (includes "Edith Wharton and the Pomegranate Seed") » Read Now
by Josephine Donovan. 198 pgs.

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...literature. 6. Myth in literature. 7. Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937 -- Characters -- Women...Golden Apples 31 3 Edith Wharton and the Pomegranate Seed 43...the pomegranate...
10.

Summer » Read Now
by Edith Wharton. 291 pgs.

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Summer, Edith Wharton wrote to Gaillard Lapsley, "is known to its author and her familars as the Hot Ethan." One of the first American novels to deal frankly with a young woman's sexual awakening, it was a publishing sensation when it appeared in 1917, praised by Joseph Conrad, Howard Sturgis, and...
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Summer, Edith Wharton wrote to Gaillard Lapsley, "is known to its author and her familars as the Hot Ethan." One of the first American novels to deal frankly with a young woman's sexual awakening, it was a publishing sensation when it appeared in 1917, praised by Joseph Conrad, Howard Sturgis, and Percy Lubbock, and favorably compared to Madame Bovary. Like its predecessor, Ethan Frome, it is set in the Berkshires, but the season is summer and the story is that of Charity Royall, a New Englander of humble origins -- passionate, forthright, and proud -- and her torrid affair with Lucius Harney, an artistically inclined young man from the city. A novel that "breaks, or stretches, many conventions of women's romantic love stories and in the process creates a new picture of female sexuality," as Marilyn French writes in her introduction, Summer is "a clamorous and ecstatic affirmation of the joy of sexual love no matter what it costs." Bold in conception, rich in imagery, and provocative by implication, it was one of Edith Wharton's personal favorites, and stands as one of her greatest novelistic achievements.
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11.

The Buccaneers » Read Now
by Edith Wharton. 371 pgs.

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...THE BUCCANEERS By EDITH WHARTON D. APPLETON-CENTURY COMPANY INCORPORATED...OF AMERICA THE subject which Mrs. Wharton treated in The Buccaneers had...will turn to it to see...
12.

The Reef: A Novel » Read Now
by Edith Wharton. 372 pgs.

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...THE REEF THE REEF A NOVEL BY EDITH WHARTON NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNERS SONS 1914 COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY BOOK I THE REEF 1 U NEXPECTED...
13.

Wretched Exotic: Essays on Edith Wharton in Europe » Read Now
by Katherine Joslin, Alan Price. 420 pgs.

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14.

Solitude and Society in the Works of Herman Melville and Edith Wharton » Read Now
by Linda Costanzo Cahir. 155 pgs.

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The interplay between solitude and society was a particularly persistent theme in nineteenth-century American literature. In confronting the antithetical states of isolation and community, these writers posed a number of questions concerning the relationships among God, humanity, and the universe...
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The interplay between solitude and society was a particularly persistent theme in nineteenth-century American literature. In confronting the antithetical states of isolation and community, these writers posed a number of questions concerning the relationships among God, humanity, and the universe. Herman Melville argued that while we are free to choose how we conduct our lives, whether in solitude or society, we cannot escape our essential condition of alienation. Writing some fifty years later, Edith Wharton reached the same conclusion. While scholars have largely disregarded Melville's influence on Wharton, this book demonstrates that she read a significant portion of his writings, that she reflected on his works, and that her consideration of his importance emerged during significant moments in her life. By examining a broad range of works written by both authors, this volume argues that Wharton was substantially influenced by Melville's concept of the alienated individual and by his views on solitude and society.
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15.

A Forward Glance: New Essays on Edith Wharton » Read Now
by Clare Colquitt, Susan Goodman, Candace Waid. 248 pgs.

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