CFP: Age of Innocence – journal issue and book volume

Dear Friends,

It was wonderful to see many of you at the recent “Wharton in Washington 2016″ conference. As we look ahead to future events, we invite you to keep in mind the centenary of Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, which was published in 1920 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1921. 

As part of the celebration, The Edith Wharton Review is planning a Special Issue on “The Age of Innocence at 100,” scheduled for Winter 2020-Spring 2021. The journal issue will include select essays from the 2020 Edith Wharton Society conference, but the editors also welcome submissions representing new readings of The Age of Innocence or its film adaptations in a post-9/11 age.

Arielle Zibrak is also organizing a book volume, co-edited with Alice Kelly, which aims to situate The Age of Innocence among Wharton’s modern contemporaries and literary descendants, rather than her antecedents, and bring new theoretical methods to bear on readings of her work. 

Calls for Papers are forthcoming, to be sent out as the directors of the 2020 conference are secured in early 2017.

We hope that you will help make the centenary of The Age of Innocence a memorable year of scholarship and reflection. 

With all best wishes,

Sharon Kim

Associate Editor,

The Edith Wharton Review

Announcing

The Age of Innocence Centenary

The Edith Wharton Review Special Issue:

“The Age of Innocence at 100”

Winter 2020-Spring 2021

Deadline for submissions: December 2019.

The Age of Innocence 

Centenary Book Volume

Co-Editors: Arielle Zibrak, Alice Kelly

Deadline for proposal submissions: tba

Wyndcliffe, home of EW’s aunt Elizabeth Schermerhorn Jones (of “keeping up with the Joneses”), for sale

From Atlas Obscura:

Wyndclyffe, a mansion in Rhinebeck, New York, which is about 100 miles north of New York City, has been in bad shape for decades, ever since it was abandoned in the 1950s after a series of owners couldn’t afford to maintain it.

Owing to its size, it’s not hard to see why: 24 rooms on 80 acres, a pre-Civil War manor house that preceded the Gilded Age, when many such mansions were routinely built, that later fell into disrepair.

But Wyndclyffe (also spelled Wyndcliffe) has a more colorful history than most. The American novelist Edith Wharton spent time there as a child, for one thing, and it’s also is believed to have inspired the phrase “keeping up with the Joneses,” after its original owner, Elizabeth Schermerhorn Jones, a New York socialite.

More at http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/nab-the-abandoned-mansion-that-inspired-the-phrase-keeping-up-with-the-joneses

Image and more text at http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/wyndcliffe-mansion

Image below and another article available at the Wall Street Journal: http://www.wsj.com/articles/faded-mansion-evokes-opulence-of-a-bygone-age-1473895594

 

 

Queries: Beatrix and Max Farrand at Bar Harbor

The Beatrix Farrand Society would like to know of any Wharton scholars who have researched (or know of anyone who has) writers and society members in Wharton’s circle who may have visited Beatrix and Max Farrand at Reef Point in Bar Harbor, Maine. If you have any knowledge of, or interest in, this topic, would you kindly contact me? Information is for a 2017 summer seminar on Reef Point and its cultural importance.

Mia Manzulli
mia.manzulli@gmail.com

The Book of the Homeless (post at the Huntington Library blog Verso by Sara S. Hodson)

Title page of The Book of the Homeless, edited by Edith Wharton and published in 1916. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens

From the Huntington Library’s Verso Blog, an  interesting post by Sara S. Hodson on The Book of the Homeless. Here’s an excerpt:

The Huntington holds the corporate archive for the Merrymount Press, extending to 320 boxes, plus ledger volumes and type samples. Among the records is a file of correspondence between Wharton, Scribner, and Updike about the planning and printing of her proposed volume, The Book of the Homeless. The virtue of the cause at hand is apparent throughout the correspondence, as when Updike writes to Wharton on Sept. 10, 1915, “Both on your account, and on account of what the book stands for, I shall do my best with it.”

A frequent topic of concern is the quality of the book, especially the reproductions of original works by such artists as Auguste Rodin, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and John Singer Sargent. Reproducing the artwork proved a challenging task due to shortages caused by the war. Updike wrote to Wharton on Jan. 7, 1916, “This has been a long and difficult piece of work. We have had a good deal of trouble with our inks, because since the war the ingredients in the colours are not reliable, and this has played us some very unpleasant tricks.”

 

A Wharton poem on the anniversary of her death

Dear All,

It was on this day in 1937 that Edith Wharton left us.  Here is a poem she wrote a few years earlier, in her private diary.  It was published recently by Laura Rattray in her two-volume Unpublished Writings of Edith Wharton.

Lullaby for a Tired Heart

It will go
Like the snow
That falls in March,
Like the glow
Of the rainbow’s arch
In the sun,
The Tempest done . .
It will go
As the streams flow,
You the leaf
The stream carries,
With your grief
That’s as brief,
On the tide that never tarries–
You will go.

All of our lives have been deeply enriched by Wharton’s presence on this earth, and loving her work has brought us all together.   For that I am grateful.

Warm thoughts for all of you,

Irene

Election Results

Dear Edith Wharton Society Members,

On the anniversary of Edith Wharton’s passing, I write to report on the recent election.  With thanks to Donna Campbell for overseeing the electronic survey, the membership has voted overwhelmingly in favor of the revisions to the EWS bylaws and in favor of two new officers to serve on the EWS board:  effective January 1, 2017, Jennifer Haytock will step in to the position of Secretary and Madeleine Vala the position of at-large member of the Executive Board.  Thank you for your support of the Edith Wharton Society and all best wishes for these cherished summer hours.

Emily Orlando
President, The Edith Wharton Society

New Articles

Drizou, Myrto. Citizenship in the ‘Land of Letters’: Edith Wharton’s Literary Home in Exile.” Critical Insights: American Writers in Exile. Eds. Jeff Birkenstein and Robert Hauhart. Amenia, NY: Salem Press, 2015. 73-87. Print.