My name is Robin Oliveira. I live in Seattle. I am the author of three books, My Name is Mary Sutter, I Always Loved You, and Winter Sisters, all historical fiction. I hold an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. I’m researching my next book and came across your name while perusing the Edith Wharton Society Web site. The book will not be non-fiction, but fiction.

I have a question and I’m wondering whether or not you can either direct me to someone who is an expert on The Age of Innocence, or whether or not you have considered the following question. I realize I’m imposing, and if you are too busy to address my question, thank you for your time, and I understand.

I’ve been studying The Age of Innocence in preparation for my new book. I’m very interested in the role of rumor in the narrative. There are many ways in which rumor works in the novel, but I’ve run into an interesting, almost niggling example. In my close reading of the text, I’ve noticed that Wharton gives three separate descriptions of Countess Olenska’s arrival in NY.

One, she appears suddenly and without warning: chapter II: Archer knew that she had suddenly arrived from Europe a day or two previously… “

Two, her uncle Mingott went to NY to retrieve her: chapter II: “I believe Lovell Mingott went out to get her….” This is Lefferts.

(Both can’t be true, since Archer is so close by now to the Mingott family that he would have known whether or not Mingott went out to get her. Mingott’s absence and errand would have been known to NYC society.)

And third, all NY knew she was coming: I can’t at this moment, pinpoint it in the text, but there is a reference that says it was known to everyone that she was coming.

MY question is whether or not this inconsistency in the text is something Wharton scholars have discussed to your knowledge? If so, have they concluded that Wharton was deliberate in placing three different explanations of Ellen’s arrival as a subtle machination of rumor in the novel? Or, perhaps it is a way to increase the mystery around the Olenska character? Both seem possible to me. Less possible is that Wharton was careless. The novel is so meticulously crafted that as an author, I doubt she was, but I’m wondering.

Have you an understanding/opinion?

Thank you very much for your time,

Sincerely,

Robin Oliveira

www.robinoliveira.com

CFP: Edith Wharton Pane at ALA 2019 in Boston (Deadline 12.1.18)

Wharton in the News: Shadow of a Doubt Production in New York

Edith Wharton’s

THE SHADOW OF A DOUBT

Monday, January 28, 2019

7:30 PM

Lucille Lortel Theatre

SUBSCRIBE NOW

Single Tickets go on-sale October 22.

Directed by Adrienne Campbell-Holt

Featuring Emily Brown, Kate Burton, Marin Ireland, and Jay O. Sanders and more to be announced!

“My dear, after twenty, all life is pretending, and it’s easier to pretend in a good house, than alone in a garret!” advises Lady Uske, urging our heroine Kate to return home to her husband, in Edith Wharton’s long-lost drama. Written 20 years before The Age of Innocence earned her the first Pulitzer Prize for Literature to be awarded to a woman, Wharton’s The Shadow of a Doubt contains kernels of the socially conscious characters and themes of her later masterpiece novels.

[read the rest at https://www.redbulltheater.com/the-shadow-of-a-doubt]

From Sharon Shaloo: New Books on WWI

Edith Wharton & Mary Roberts Rinehart at the Western Front, 1915; by Ed
& Libby Klekowski, McFarland 2018

A face book page supplements the book.

https://www.facebook.com/Edith-Wharton-Mary-Roberts-Rinehart-at-the-Western-Front-1519953888072769/

EWS Meeting Minutes from ALA

The Edith Wharton Society meeting minutes from ALA on 5/26/18 are available here:

https://edithwhartonsociety.wordpress.com/membership/ews-business-2/2018-05-25-minutes-for-edith-wharton-society-business-meeting-american-literature-association-conference-san-francisco-ca-friday-5-25-18/

Lecture: Linda Selman: The Inadvertent Researcher: A New York Story Parlor, June 07, 2018

NYC at the Salmagundi Club, 47 Fifth Avenue.

Linda Selman: The Inadvertent Researcher: A New York Story

Parlor, June 07, 2018

Thursday, 6:30pm

Free admission.

Sponsored by the SCNY Program Committee.

About the lecture:

Playwright Linda Selman recounts from her book, The Inadvertent Researcher: A New York Story, how the painting principles of the Hudson River School of Art, the Ashcan School, and the Tonalist Movement found in Edith Wharton’s first New York novella “Bunner Sisters,” led her to discover unknown works of art housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New-York Historical Society, and the Salmagundi Club, while adapting the narrative for the stage. Written in 1891, but not published until 1916, the story focuses on the drama and hopes of the poor, the immigrant, and the disenfranchised as they attempt to eke out meaningful lives in the tenement houses and overcrowded streets of the city. These findings culminated with her discovery of an “American Bloomsbury” community in Nutley, New Jersey where art influenced literature and literature influenced art. And ultimately, to a leader in a movement that changed the tastes of America and established cultural standards still revered today – Henry Cuyler Bunner, grandnephew of Alexander Hamilton, editor-in-chief of Puck magazine, father of the New York Story genre, and a founder of the reform-minded Independent Party.

About the speaker:

Linda Selman has developed, directed and written works for Off-Broadway including the two Emmy Award-winning Bubbe Meises/Bubbe Stories, From My Lady’s Diary:Marie Antoinette, Tallulah Hallelujah! Starring Tovah Feldshuh, and Bunner Sisters at the Metropolitan Playhouse Gilded Age Festival. (The first presentation of Bunner Sisters was in 2006 at the Salmagundi Club.) In November of 2017, Nutley, N.J. inducted Henry Cuyler Bunner into their Hall of Fame. Ms. Selman accepted the honor for the Bunner Family and also co-curated with the director of the Nutley Historical Society, John Simko, the exhibition “The World of H. C. Bunner: Changing the Tastes of America from New York to Nutley.” Ms. Selman is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America and Chair of the Theatre Committee at the National Arts Club.

Her beautiful book, The Inadvertent Researcher: A New York Story will be available after the lecture for signing and purchase.

Dining Room opens at 5:30pm. Attendees can dine before or after the presentation. Reservations are required. Please call 212-255-7740 to make a reservation.

The Edith Wharton Society

From Jennifer Haytock: Call for nominations for EWS positions

Queries: Introduction of Ellen in TheAge of Innocence