Edith Wharton in Context

by Rattray, Laura

• ISBN13: 9781107010192
• ISBN10: 1107010195
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-10-31
• Publisher: Cambridge Univ Pr

Summary

Edith Wharton was one of America's most popular and prolific writers, becoming the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1921. In a publishing career spanning seven decades, Wharton lived and wrote through a period of tremendous social, cultural, and historical change. Bringing together a team of international scholars, this volume provides the first substantial text dedicated to the various contexts that frame Wharton's remarkable career. Each essay offers a clearly argued and lucid assessment of Wharton's work as it relates to seven key areas: life and works, critical receptions, book and publishing history, arts and aesthetics, social designs, time and place, and literary milieux. These sections provide a broad and accessible resource for students coming to Wharton for the first time while offering scholars new critical insights. Of interest to English and American studies departments, the volume will also appeal to researchers in gender studies, film studies, book history, art history, and transatlantic studies.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations

Notes on contributors

List of abbreviations

Preface

Life and Works

Edith Wharton: contextual revisions

Chronology: Wharton in cultural and historical context

Biography

Composition and publication

Portraits of Wharton

Critical Receptions

Contemporary reviews 1877-1938

Obituaries

'Justice' to Edith Wharton?: The early critical responses

Modern critical receptions

Book and Publishing History

Wharton and her editors

Selling Wharton

Serialization

Short story markets

Arts and Aesthetics

Stage adaptations of Wharton's fiction

Wharton's writings on screen

Visual arts

Architecture

Interior and garden design

Images of Wharton

Social Designs

The marriage market

Leisured lives

Wharton and gender

Race and imperialism

Social transitions

Time and Place

Wharton and France

Wharton and Italy

Wharton and World War I

The 1920s

Wharton and the Great Depression

Literary Milieux

Literary influences

Wharton and the American romantics

The novel of manners

Naturalism

Modernism

Further reading

Index

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