Wharton in the News: A Motor-Flight through France

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From First Things, https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2019/07/what-she-asks-she-obtains

Though Adams was anxious about the reckless acceleration of history, his friend Edith Wharton mashed her foot down on the accelerator in her Motor Flight Through France. Dogmatically confident in her own taste, she shunned the popular artworks starred in guide books. She stopped in Rouen and stumbled upon Gerhard David’s Virgin Among The Virgins. She named it “The Virgin of the Grapes” for the “heavenly translucence of that bunch of grapes plucked from the vine of Paradise” held by the Infant Jesus on the Virgin’s lap. “It is part of its very charm to leave unsettled, to keep among the mysteries whereby it draws one back,” she wrote. Wharton drove on to the next town, but the Virgin stayed with her. Father John LaFarge, S.J., remembers being quietly interrogated about his religious beliefs by Wharton “as if she were looking for something desperately needed, but only vaguely knowing her own needs.”

New books: Selected Poems of Edith Wharton, edited by Irene Goldman-Price

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selected-poems-of-edith-wharton-9781501182839_lgEdith Wharton, the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with her novel The Age of Innocence, was also a brilliant poet. This revealing collection of 134 poems brings together a fascinating array of her verse—including fifty poems that have never before been published.

The celebrated American novelist and short story writer Edith Wharton, author of The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome, and the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Age of Innocence, was also a dedicated, passionate poet. A lover of words, she read, studied, and composed poetry all of her life, publishing her first collection of poems at the age of sixteen. In her memoir, A Backward Glance, Wharton declared herself dazzled by poetry; she called it her “chiefest passion and greatest joy.”

The 134 selected poems in this volume include fifty published for the first time. Wharton’s poetry is arranged thematically, offering context as the poems explore new facets of her literary ability and character.

Here is the link to the publisher’s page:  https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Selected-Poems-of-Edith-Wharton/Edith-Wharton/9781501182839

LitHub:  https://lithub.com/spurned-in-love-edith-wharton-turned-to-poetry/

Probably the most important thing to say is that the book has 134 of 200 known poems by Edith Wharton, 50 of them published for the first time.

New books:Women Adapting: Bringing Three Serials of the Roaring Twenties to Stage and Screen

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Wood_webNew Books: Women Adapting: Bringing Three Serials of the Roaring Twenties to Stage and Screen
Author: Bethany Wood
Women Adapting: Bringing Three Serials of the Roaring Twenties to Stage and Screen
University of Iowa Press, 2019
Women Adapting examines three well-known stories that debuted as women’s magazine serials: Anita Loos’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, and Edna Ferber’s Show Boat. Through meticulous archival research, this study traces how each of these beloved narratives traveled across publishing, theatre, and film through adaptation. The three chapters devoted to Wharton’s The Age of Innocence contain new research on the lost 1920s film adaptation as well as the 1928 stage version. Bethany Wood documents the formation of adaptation systems and how they involved women’s voices and labor in modern entertainment in ways that have been previously underappreciated. What emerges is a picture of a unique window in time in the early decades of the twentieth century, when women in entertainment held influential positions in production and management.

Wharton in the News: Who was Edith Wharton’s father? in the TLS

Via Anna Girling. Note: it’s behind a paywall, so I have no idea what’s beyond this excerpt.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/private/mystery-writers-edith-wharton-father/

Mystery writers

Who was Edith Wharton’s father?

ALIDA YOUNG

As research assistant to R. W. B. Lewis, the prize-winning biographer of Edith Wharton, Marion Mainwaring – assigned in 1969 to investigate Wharton’s “Parisian phase” – found herself knocking on forbidding doors in unpredictable arrondissements of Paris, in far-flung hôtels de ville and at a remote psychiatric hospital in the French countryside as she doggedly pursued every shred of information she could find about a wily, elusive American expatriate named William Morton Fullerton. Fullerton (1865–1952), a Harvard graduate and a correspondent for The Times in Paris, was a roué and conman, a cosmopolitan libertine with a proclivity for the upper crust and satyr-like propensities for bisexual romantic entanglements (a wistful Henry James opined that he was “dazzling” but “not kind”), and chronically in debt because he was being blackmailed by a former mistress. He was also briefly, but pivotally and inexplicably, Wharton’s lover.

CFP: EWS Prizes for 2019 (Deadline June 30, 2019)

The Edith Wharton Society is delighted to announce three prizes for 2019.  Below please find all calls for submissions.  All submission materials should be sent via email by June 30, 2019 to current EWS President, Melanie Dawson, College of William and Mary, at mvdaws@wm.edu.

 

The Elsa Nettels Prize for a Beginning Scholar

This award, formerly known as the “Edith Wharton Society Prize for a Beginning Scholar,” established in 2005, recognizes the best unpublished essay on Edith Wharton’s work by a beginning scholar, advanced graduate student, independent scholar, or faculty member who has held a full-time appointment for four or fewer years.  All entries will be considered for publication in The Edition Wharton Review, published by Penn State University Press.  The author of the prize-winning essay will receive an award of $250.  Submissions should be 20-30 double-spaced pages long and follow the 8th edition MLA style, using endnotes rather than footnotes. Submissions should include two attached files: an anonymized MS Word version of your paper and a separate cover letter containing the applicant’s name, essay title, academic status, e-mail address, postal address, and the award name.  Please use the subject line: “EWS Elsa Nettels Prize for a Beginning Scholar.”  Submissions are due to mvdaws@wm.edu by June 30, 2019.

The Edith Wharton Society Award for Archival Research 

The archival award, in the amount of $500, enables a scholar to conduct research at one of the Edith Wharton archives at Wharton’s library at The Mount in Lenox, MA, the Wharton Collection at Yale University’s Beinecke Library, or the Wharton papers at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas.  Submissions should include a proposal (of no more than two single-spaced pages) that describes the applicant’s overarching research project, its contribution to Wharton scholarship, the applicant’s scholarly preparation, and the relevance of the archive to the project’s completion.  Also include two additional attachments: a CV and a separate cover letter containing your current affiliation, rank, and mailing address.

Funds must be used for transportation, lodging, and other expenses related to archival research.  Notification of the award will take place by July 30, 2019.  The award can be used between August 1, 2019 and July 30, 2020.  A brief report detailing some aspect(s) of the research (not intended to preempt publication in other scholarly venues) will be due to the EWS president by September 1, 2020 and will be published in the Edith Wharton Review. Pleas use the subject line: “EWS Award for Archival Research.” Submissions are due to mvdaws@wm.edu by June 30, 2019.

The Edith Wharton Society Undergraduate Research Prize

First offered in 2014, the undergraduate research prize is open to students at all undergraduate levels.  Papers should be no more than fifteen pages long and can address Wharton’s works in any genre.  The winning essay will be published on the EWS website, and the author will receive an award of $100.  Please send an anonymized electronic submission as an email attachment in Microsoft word, along with a separate attached cover letter containing your name, essay title, undergraduate institution, the name of your faculty mentor, e-mail address (and perhaps an alternate email, if your email address is about to change), postal address, and the name of the award. Please use the subject line: “EWS Undergraduate Research Prize.”  Submissions are due to mvdaws@wm.edu by June 30, 2019.

The Edith Wharton Society sees its commitment to Wharton’s writing as including  financial support for Wharton scholarship, with two awards specifically for beginning scholars.  We thank all in the Wharton society who have donated to these prizes over the years, many of whom have been award recipients; your support of this endeavor enables our generosity.  If you are inclined to donate to support this year’s awards, a donation portal is linked in the top menu and here: https://edithwhartonsociety.wordpress.com/donate

Conference Update: Edith Wharton’s New York in 2020

Edith Wharton’s New York:
A Conference Sponsored by the Edith Wharton Society New Yorker Hotel
June 17th-20th 2020

Please join the Edith Wharton Society for its upcoming conference marking the centennial anniversary of the publication of Edith Wharton’s Pulitzer-Prize winning novel, The Age of Innocence. We will celebrate this momentous year in New York, the setting not only of so many of Wharton’s works but also of much of her life.

While all topics are welcome, we are particularly interested in whole panels and individual papers that focus on New York as a geographical and thematic element in Wharton’s life and works. Papers could explore the role of New York City and/or the Hudson River Valley in Wharton’s works, Wharton’s own history with the region, or Wharton’s relationship to place and space more generally. Papers that offer new readings of The Age of Innocence—such as new historical approaches or legacies of The Age of Innocence, the novel’s relationship to other works by Wharton and/or her peers, and adaptations of the novel (for film, theater, etc.)—are also welcome.

Since 1920 marks the beginning of what many consider the “later years” of Wharton’s career, examinations of Edith Wharton’s works in the shifting literary and political foundations of post- WWI society are also of interest. The 20s mark the centennial of other significant Wharton texts, and essays that examine these later works are of particular interest.

In addition, there will be a keynote speaker and opportunities for tours of local attractions. Further details forthcoming.

We welcome submissions for full panels of 4-5 participants and roundtables of 6-7 participants as well as individual paper submissions. Please submit proposals no later than August 1st, 2019 to whartonnewyork@gmail.com

For full panel and roundtable proposals, please submit 200-350-word summaries of each presentation included in the panel or roundtable as well as a brief 50-word bio and A/V requests for each presenter.

For individual paper proposals, please submit a 350-500-word abstract, a brief 50-word bio, and A/V requests as one Word document.

All conference participants must be members of the Edith Wharton Society at the time of registration.

For additional information, contact co-directors at email address above or individually: Margaret Toth (Meg), Manhattan College margaret.toth@manhattan.edu
Margaret Jay Jessee (Jay), University of Alabama at Birmingham mjjessee@uab.edu