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Edith
Wharton If you've enjoyed reading The Age of Innocence, the best-known of her other novels are Ethan Frome, The House of Mirth, and The Custom of the Country. Lesser-known, but well worth reading, are The Children (not yet in the library!) and the astonishing The Reef. She is also a fine writer of short stories. The Cambridge Companion to Edith Wharton (PS3545.H16 Z636 1995), edited by Millicent Bell, is a good general guide, and part of a fine series to look out for throughout this course. David Holbrook's Edith Wharton and the Unsatisfactory Man (PS3545.H16 Z615) and Gary H. Lindberg's Edith Wharton and the Novel of Manners (PS3545.H16 Z698 1975) are useful for The Age of Innocence. Robert Morss Lovett's Edith Wharton (PS3545.H16Z7 1976) is a reprint of his 1925 book on Wharton, published during her lifetime. Louis Auchinscloss's Edith Wharton is a classic short study (PS3545.H16 Z55 1961). Katherine Joslin's Edith Wharton (PS3545.H16 Z685 1991) and Dale M. Bauer's Edith Wharton's Brave New Poilitcs (on order) focus on Wharton's feminism. There is a chapter on Wharton in Elaine Showalter's Sister's Choice: Tradition and Change in American Women's Writing (PS147.S48 1991), though its main focus is House of Mirth. The most recent biography of Wharton is Shari Benstock's 1994 No Gifts from Chance (PS3545.H16 Z595). Gloria Erlich's The Sexual Education of Edith Wharton is a controversial study, not least for the extraordinary and unexpected fragment, "Beatrice Palmato," which it publishes for the first time (PS3545.H16 Z646). The main website to visit is the Edith Wharton Society's home page. It includes links to etexts of many of the main works, online concordances, and contemporary reviews, a brief biography, thorough critical bibliography, a list of further web resources, and much more. The National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian in Washington has a fine online exhibition, Edith Wharton's World: Portraits of People and Places. Dee Shidler's Wharton site has links to etexts and resources, as well as a picture gallery of photographs of Wharton's country house, The Mount, in the Berkshires, Massachusetts. Even though the house is in decay, you can get a very clear idea of the surroundings in which Wharton's characters move. For more information, see the Edith Wharton Mount Restoration site. Domestic Goddesses, which is run through Women Writers zine, is "a moderated E-journal, devoted to women writers, beginning in the 19th century, who wrote domestic fiction." It has some good resources on Wharton, including annotated links and some online critical essays. Project Gutenberg has an etext of The Age of Innocence. Raza Syed has a hypertext version of a Wharton story, "Xingu", which is well worth exploring, not least for its design and links. |
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