2021 EWS Awards Announced

Dear Edith Wharton Society members, 

I’m delighted to announce this year’s winners of the Edith Wharton Society awards: 

The Elsa Nettels Prize for a Beginning Scholar 

Emma Aylor, Texas Tech University 

“’Nay, rather, Lord, between’: The Unification of Body and Spirit in Wharton’s Deathbed Monologues” 

The Award for Archival Research  

Lina Geriguis, Cabrillo College   

“Wharton, Equity, and Editorial Decisions: Authorial Agency in Shaping the Disability Discourse in the Rare Editions of Ethan Frome” 

The Undergraduate Research Prize 

Alp Eren Pirli, Boğaziçi University 

“Telegraphic Naturalism: Technological Determinism in The Reef” 

https://edithwhartonsociety.wordpress.com/awards/ews-award-recipients/undergraduate-awards/2021-ews-undergraduate-essay-prize-alp-eren-pirli-bogazici-university-for-telegraphic-naturalism-technological-determinism-in-the-reef/

I’m pleased that we had robust submissions this year, and I wish to extend many thanks to the Awards committees for their careful and thoughtful work: for the Elsa Nettels Prize: Myrto Drizou, Donna Campbell, and Laura Rattray; for the Award for Archival Research: Melanie Dawson, Sheila Liming, and Meg Toth; and for the Undergraduate Research Prize: Jay Jessee and Virginia Ricard. 

Many congratulations to the winners! It’s a joy to see such strong scholarship on Edith Wharton and her work. 

All best, 

Jennifer 

Dr. Jennifer Haytock
Professor, English Department

EWS ALA Business Meeting Minutes available

The minutes for the ALA business meeting of the EWS are available here:

https://edithwhartonsociety.wordpress.com/membership/ews-business-2/2021-07-09-ala-meeting-minutes/

Last Call for New Books Week (due Friday, July 16).

Dear Whartonites–

Last call for “New Books Week”; I’ll include everything received up through this Friday, July 16.

On 7/1/21, 12:32 PM, “Wharton-l on behalf of Campbell, Donna M.” <wharton-l-bounces@lists.wsu.edu on behalf of campbelld@wsu.edu> wrote:

    Dear Whartonites,

    Last summer, the EWS site had a “New Books Week” featuring books and articles on Wharton, and we’d like to do the same this year.

    If you’ve published a new book or article about Wharton in 2021, please send me (whartonqueries@gmail.com or campbelld@wsu.edu) information that can be copied & pasted to the site along with a link, and it will be featured at the site, which links to Facebook and Twitter as well.

    Best,

    Donna

Call for Titles: New Books Week at the EWS site

Dear Whartonites,

Last summer, the EWS site had a “New Books Week” featuring books and articles on Wharton, and we’d like to do the same this year.

If you’ve published a new book or article about Wharton in 2021, please send me (whartonqueries@gmail.com or campbelld@wsu.edu) information that can be copied & pasted to the site along with a link, and it will be featured at the site, which links to Facebook and Twitter as well.

Edith Wharton short story “La Famille” now published

Edith Wharton Society members might be interested to read a previously unpublished short story Wharton wrote in French, entitled ‘La Famille’ which has been published with an English translation and introduction in Journal of the Short Story in English / Les Cahiers de la nouvelle (JSSE)
I came across the story in her papers at the Beinecke library archives. To date, Wharton’s only published French short stories have been “Les Metteurs en Scène,” which appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes in October 1908 and her French version of Atrophy (1927) entitled “Atrophie” and also published in the Revue des Deux Mondes in July 1929.”La Famille” is the story of a young, independent American woman, Nina Alston, who is intending to marry into a titled French family. The choice to write in French is an apt one given the French setting and using this language allows Wharton to both playfully and subtly explore the clash between the respective cultures of the affianced couple. Wharton’s narrative mischievously sends up both the French family’s attitude towards tradition and form, and Nina’s newly-found American relatives’ love of all things modern combined with their misunderstandings of history. That is, if this rather odd group of people really are her family…
Sarah Whitehead
The story can be found at:https://journals.openedition.org/jsse/2904

“Roman Fever play

Dear Edith Wharton Society,
This is a preliminary note to seek any counsel you may have.  I have, with the permission of Watkins/Loomis Agency, obtained a limited permission to adaptation “Roman Fever” into a stage production.  This script is very faithful to the story and incorporates both traditional scenes and some proposed dance sequences to illustrate scenes from the two focal characters’ early life. I am in talks with the Annapolis Shakespeare Company here in Maryland to create a workshop production for later this year.  It is anticipated that the work would be livestreamed for a limited time and feature professional actors and dancers and original music. 
As with most workshops in regional theaters, the budget must be small and the funding for it cannot take away from the budgets for the theater company’s mainstage productions.  While a formal budget is in the works, we don’t anticipate it to amount to more than between 5 and 10 thousand dollars.  
Any knowledge you may have of possible donors, grants or sponsorships from organizations that would have particular interest in promoting the works of Edith Wharton would be very appreciated.  
I have attached my professional bio, and here is the link to the Annapolis Shakespeare Company for your information:  https://www.annapolisshakespeare.org/index.html
I am happy to communicate via email, phone or Zoom and provide the draft script or other information as needed.
WIth appreciation,
Greg Jones Elliswww.gregjonesellis.com

Edith Wharton: Designing the Drawing Room

An online exhibition at the Beinecke Library, Yale University.

https://onlineexhibits.library.yale.edu/s/edith-wharton/page/introduction

One century ago, Edith Wharton (1862–1937) published The Age of Innocence, a novel that has become one of her most beloved works. Less known is her first full-length publication, an 1897 interior design treatise titled The Decoration of Houses. Wharton’s keen interest in architecture and the design of interiors and gardens remained with her throughout her career. While she published novels, stories, poems, and nonfiction, she directed the design of her homes, from her country estate The Mount in Lenox, Massachusetts, to her New York City residence on Park Avenue.

Many of Wharton’s ideas about interior design react against the lavish frills and profusion of patterned cloth present in her childhood home, pictured here, at West 25th Street in NYC

Wharton ca. 1920, the year The Age of Innocence was published

Edith Wharton: Designing the Drawing Room brings together both aspects of Wharton’s career. It explores the rules she defined in The Decoration of Houses and their application in her own homes alongside her attention to design details in the handwritten manuscript of The Age of Innocence. These pages reveal Wharton’s deep engagement with the material world during her writing process and in the published novel.

This exhibit focuses on Wharton’s treatment of the drawing room, known to her as a female space during a period of limiting gendered customs. In the world she describes in much of her writing, the drawing room was a specific sort of sitting room to which women would traditionally “withdraw” following dinner. The drawing room was also a space in which women could spend their days and receive guests. As such, drawing rooms provide a particularly rich context for understanding Wharton’s elite New York City society at the turn of the twentieth century and the role of women within it.

https://onlineexhibits.library.yale.edu/s/edith-wharton/page/edith-wharton-welcome

Submitted by Sharon Kim.

EWS Directory Updated

The Edith Wharton Society Membership Directory has been updated:

https://edithwhartonsociety.wordpress.com/membership/directory/

Update: Mock Trial of Ethan Frome (4 PM EST)

The Zoom info and documents for tomorrow’s mock trial of Ethan Frome have gone out on wharton-l https://edithwhartonsociety.wordpress.com/membership/wharton-l/

Please find attached each side’s legal brief for tomorrow’s Zoom mock trial, which will start at 4:00 EST.  Pretrial hearings will start at 3:00, so please do not be surprised if there is ongoing activity when you enter Zoom.  The class is both excited and a little intimidated that members of EWS will be in attendance.  If you have any questions, please let me know.

Wharton Queries: Information on In Morocco

My name is Diane, i am journalist from french television station called Arte, a french and german channel : https://www.arte.tv/fr/

We produce a daily cultural show : Invitation au Voyage, broadcasted every day at 4.30 pm. It deals with travel, culture, history and discovery 

https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/RC-014340/invitation-au-voyage/

I am contacting you because i am preparing a report about Edith Wharton in Morroco. I am currently based in Rabat and i am looking for some documentation, analysis, thesis, any supports, about her trip and i thought that may be you could help me ? 

Name: DIANE ARAGOU

Email:diane.aragou@gmail.com