A Historical Guide to Edith Wharton

by Carol J. Singley

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195135916
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	01/30/2003
Series:	Historical Guides to American Authors
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	9.56(w) x 5.50(h) x 0.97(d)

About the Author

Carol J. Singley is Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University-Camden. She is past president of the Edith Wharton Society.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Edith Wharton, 1862-1937: A Brief Biography, Shari Benstock
2. Edith Wharton in Her Time
3. Wharton's Women: In Fashion, In History, Out of Time, Martha Banta
4. Emerson, Darwin, and The Custom of the Country, Cecelia Tichi
5. Wharton's "Others": Addiction and Intimacy, Dale M. Bauer
6. Wharton, Travel, and Modernity, Nancy Bentley
7. Wharton and Art, Eleanor Dwight
8. Wharton and the Age of Film, Linda Costanzo Cahir
9. Illustrated Chronology
10. Bibliographic Essay: Visions and Revisions of Wharton, Clare Colquitt
Contributors
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Expertly assembled and introduced by Carol J. Singley, the Oxford volume amply verifies what one of its contributors calls the 'recuperation of Wharton's reputation' and 'the thriving state of Wharton scholarship today'.... [An] absorbing and provocative collection of essays."—Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers

From the Publisher