Valerie M. Smith, “Edith Wharton’s Position on the Real in A Motor-Flight Through France: Arthur Schopenhauer and Aesthetic-Sublime Contemplation,” English Studies
Eprint version:
https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/5VPJVQGJQTZHR3D78TEM/full?target=10.1080/0013838X.2023.2273137
“Edith Wharton and Film.” The Bloomsbury Handbook to Edith Wharton, ed. Emily Orlando. Bloomsbury Press, 2023. 117-134.
Edith Wharton’s novels are filled with references to motion pictures and moviemaking, as critics have shown. Drawing on early film history, as well as readings of the films themselves, this essay analyzes available scenarios and contemporary publicity to contextualize Wharton’s films as the audiences of her time would have understood them including now-lost silent films that were made during her lifetime such as The House of Mirth, The Glimpses of the Moon, and The Age of Innocence or those that are largely inaccessible, such as The Marriage Playground. The phases of adaptations of Wharton’s work from the silent era to the golden age of Hollywood of the 1930s and 1940s, to the television adaptations of the 1950s and 1960s, and up to the modern Wharton revival of the 1990s and 2000s reveal the ways in which the treatment of Wharton’s themes was at times too revolutionary for her own day but surprisingly prescient for our own.
Singley, Carol, Frederick Wegener, and Donna Campbell. “The Complete Works of Edith Wharton: New Discoveries.” The Bloomsbury Handbook to Edith Wharton, ed. Emily Orlando. Bloomsbury Press, 2023. 269-286.
The Complete Works of Edith Wharton (CWEWh) is being published in thirty volumes, in print and online, by Oxford University Press, in accordance with current standards in textual editing; and with an open-access digital component reflecting the latest developments in the digital humanities. CWEWh, with its full critical and textual introductions, notes, and emendations, makes reliable texts of all of Wharton’s published and unpublished writing available for the first time; organizes her writing generically and chronologically in new ways; allows readers to chart her compositional processes; and highlights discoveries of new Wharton texts and translations through archival research.
https://anthempress.com/whartonian-landscapes-hb
This book sets forth how the “greening” of Wharton’s private and public writings contributes to exciting strands in cultural geography and recent postcolonial theory: for example, biological and political constructions of citizenship, mobility, race, and nation; hospitality and hostility toward the “Other”; fraught experiences of exile and competing conceptions of home/land; trans/national selfhood; the figure of the nomad, the outcast, or the wanderer. Ultimately, it will address this question: What are the issues, broadly speaking what motivates an ecocriticism, how does that address the challenges of cultural geography, why can we uncover meaning by turning to Wharton? The argument made is that a reading of Wharton’s fiction can help reveal how to understand those issues. This book situates Wharton as an author who is acutely responsive to pastoral tropes and terrain, among other species of spaces. She addresses the affective and geographical resonances of such sites, especially sparsely populated localities and landforms—voguish mountain resorts, private ornamental gardens, lush public parks, monumental and “sham” ruins—which offered pampered American socialites a brief escape from the “welter.” I wish to complicate popular perceptions of “Wharton’s world”—reinforced by numerous handsomely produced cinematic and television adaptations of her novels—as one rooted in often-opulent domestic interiors with their waspish social cliques, strict rules of politesse, and elaborate hierarchies.
Indeed, one of the central aims of this book is to treat pastoral as a kind of palimpsest—a “parchment” upon which successive generations of artist-pilgrims have etched their impressions, constantly revising its imagery, formal procedures, and lyrical effects. This notion of the palimpsest also reinforces how my research seeks to extend the range of Wharton studies. First of all, my close reading of selected texts adds another “layer” of sophistication to the ever-evolving field of ecocriticism, whose core ideas and critical standpoints have assumed both an urgency and galvanizing potency given the seismic upheaval to our material localities around the globe—some of the most damaging tornadoes in US history; flooding in the American Midwest; devastating earthquakes in Haiti, China, and Japan; stronger and more extensive wildfires in the American Southwest.
Edith Wharton, A Son at the Front, edited, introduction, and explanatory notes, in the Oxford World’s Classics series (2023).
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/a-son-at-the-front-9780198859550?cc=us&lang=en&
This new edition of Wharton’s First World War novel provides a corrected text, scholarly introduction, extensive explanatory notes, two maps keyed to the text, and a volume-specific chronology and bibliography.
“Edith Wharton and Willa Cather: Beyond ‘Surface Differences.’” In The Bloomsbury Handbook to Edith Wharton, ed. Emily Orlando; Bloomsbury (UK), 2022.
Abstract: Edith Wharton and Willa Cather: Beyond “Surface Differences”
Although they are both giants of American literature, Edith Wharton and Willa Cather (1873-1947) have rarely been studied together. Pigeon-holing the two authors by class and place has oversimplified both: Wharton is categorized as an eastern aristocrat, Cather as a western populist. Yet they lived and worked in the same “space-time capsule” (Nancy Green); moreover, their works carry on complex conversations with each other. In their fiction, non-fiction, and other writings, they expressed nearly identical concerns about American culture, including its overemphasis on money-making and its consequent lack of appreciation for beauty. Emphasizing place in literature (derived from Bakhtin’s chronotope), the essay proposes the term intersectional intertextuality to identify literary works set in the same place which speak to each other profoundly, as Wharton’s and Cather’s do in New York City, the West, and France. Further, it argues for new studies between authors who may seem unlikely matches, but whose work coincides in place and focus.
Abstract for an article forthcoming in the Edith Wharton Review entitled “Wharton, Writing, and Nature.”
Although past critics of Wharton’s work have focused on the social world she
depicts, Wharton also presents the natural world in her work, from poems she
wrote as a teenager through her late writings. Using Thomas Lyon’s “Taxonomy of
Nature Writing” (1989), this article looks at a range of Wharton’s work to argue
that she is indeed a “nature writer.” Wharton’s work in Italian Villas and Their
Gardens and A Motor-Flight Through France meditate on the relationship
between landscape and human habitation, and her lifelong experiences of gar-
dening in various climates deepened her ecological understanding of climatologi-
cal differences. Wharton’s first published story, “Mrs. Manstey’s View,” argues for
the importance of nature even in an urban setting, while also creating a charac-
ter who is a phenologist (someone who studies seasonal cycles); much later
in her career, her paired novels Hudson River Bracketed and The Gods Arrive
not only demonstrate Wharton’s own skill as a nature writer, but also convey the
importance of nature, both cosmic and local, as inspiration to the writer. Finally,
the article suggests that Wharton’s attentiveness to nature may have made her a
better writer; moreover, it asks readers to consider Wharton’s depictions of nature
as they consider today’s ecological crisis.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgments
Preface
Dale M. Bauer
Foreword
Nicholas Hudson, Anne Schuyler, and Susan Wissler
1 Introduction: Broadening the Horizon of Edith Wharton Studies
Emily J. Orlando
Part One Edith Wharton and Identity
2 Single, White, Female: Miscegenation, Incest, and Reproduction in Edith
Wharton’s Twilight Sleep
Meredith L. Goldsmith
3 Queer Wharton: The Exultations and Agonies of Kate Clephane’s Closet Shannon Brennan
4 Picturing Edith Wharton’s Modern Woman: Gender and the Social
Construction of Age
Melanie V. Dawson
5 Paralysis and Euthanasia in Wharton’s The Fruit of the Tree, The Shadow of a
Doubt, and Ethan Frome
Maria-Novella Mercuri
Part Two Edith Wharton Beyond the Novel
6 “Social Order and Individual Appetites”: Edith Wharton’s Short Stories, 1891-1904
Paul J. Ohler
7 Edith Wharton in Verse
Emily Setina
8 Edith Wharton and Film
Donna M. Campbell
Part Three Influences and Intertextualities
9 “The Chill Joy of Renunciation”: Feminine Sacrifice in Edith Wharton
and Christina Rossetti
Margaret Jay Jessee
10 Edith Wharton and Willa Cather: Beyond “Surface Differences”
Julie Olin-Ammentorp
11 Consciousness in Edith Wharton and Henry James: The Reef
and The Golden Bowl
Jill Kress Karn
Part Four Global and Cultural Contexts
12 Edith Wharton and the Narratives of Travel and Tourism
Gary Totten
13 Seeking a Home for the Wretched Exotics: Edith Wharton’s
Heterotopic Views of Greece
Myrto Drizou
14 “Totally Vanished…Like a Pinch of Dust”: Edith Wharton and
the Trope of Cultural Extinction
Nir Evron
15 Edith Wharton and Pleasure
Virginia Ricard
16 The Mermaid as Capitalist: Networking and Upward Mobility in Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country
Francesca Sawaya
Part Five Edith Wharton’s Library
17 Reading the Reader: Edith Wharton’s Library, Digital Methods,
and the Uses of Data
Sheila Liming
18 The Complete Works of Edith Wharton: Preparing the First
Authoritative Edition
Carol J. Singley, Donna M. Campbell and Frederick Wegener
Afterword: Edith Wharton in the Twenty-First Century
Elaine Showalter
Bibliography
Index
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/bloomsbury-handbook-to-edith-wharton-9781350182943/
I was on two podcasts discussing my work on Wharton’s Morocco and did a blog post for a new website designed as a clearinghouse for information on US-Morocco relations:
Edith Wharton: In Morocco
Ep. 39
•
Tuesday, January 3, 2023
Edith Wharton ranks as one of the Gilded Age’s most prolific and popular writers. In this episode, Professor Stacy Holden tells us about her research on Wharton’s lesser known travelogue In Morocco, a revealing account of the author’s travels to the French and Spanish colony. It tells us a great deal about American and European imperialism, and the Orientalism that pervaded her thinking.
https://shows.acast.com/gildedageandprogressiveera/episodes/edith-wharton-in-morocco
Moroccan/American, Edith Wharton Goes to Morocco with Stacy Holden (20 January 2023), https://rss.com/podcasts/moroccanamericanpod/788790/
“Edith Wharton in Morocco,” blog post for “Moroccan American Studies Initiative,” nd (January 2023), https://www.moroccanamericanstudies.com/stacy-holden-1
Edith Wharton was one of the most famous American writers of the early twentieth century. Her portrait of high society New York captured both the glamor and conformity of the Gilded Age. While her masterpiece novels Ethan Frome and The Age of Innocence made her famous, she also wrote a popular travelogue describing her trip to Morocco in the early days of the French Protectorate. More than just a travelogue, In Morocco highlights a pivotal moment in world history and how American artistic and literary connections to Morocco have shaped political perceptions about the place.
Cita Press has published a new edition of Edith Wharton’s The Old Maid. In this 1924 novella, cousins Delia and Charlotte conspire to raise Charlotte’s secret daughter right under the nose of “old New York” society. Wharton expertly examines her characters and the social contradictions they exploit to protect their family in a story that is as biting as it is tender and, at times, perplexingly triumphant.
We are thrilled to bring this book to new audiences with a free, open access edition available online to all readers with an internet connection. The book is available in English and Spanish: https://citapress.org/#books/old-maid
On Tuesday, May 17 at 6 pm ET, journalist and author Krithika Varagur, who wrote the foreword for this edition, will discuss the book and Wharton’s evolving legacy with Cita Press editorial coordinator Jessi Haley. Details and registration for this virtual event here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-old-maid-by-edith-wharton-cita-press-book-launch-with-krithika-varagur-tickets-332901566547
Cita Press is a bilingual press that celebrates the spread of culture and knowledge by publishing writing by women that is open-licensed or in the public domain. Through its library of carefully designed free books, Cita honors the principles of decentralization, collective artistic production, and equitable access to knowledge. All of our work is non-commercial and intended for educational purposes. Subscribe to our newsletter via https://tinyletter.com/citapress
Email:jessi@citapress.org
Website:https://citapress.org/#home
American Snobs: Transatlantic Novelists, Liberal Culture and the Genteel Tradition by Emily Coit
Arguing that Henry Adams, Henry James, and Edith Wharton articulated their political thought in response to the liberalism that reigned in Boston and, more specifically, at Harvard University, American Snobs shows how each of these authors interrogated that liberalism’s arguments for education, democracy and the political duties of the cultivated elite. Coit shows that the works of these authors contributed to a realist critique of a liberal New England idealism that fed into the narrative about ‘the genteel tradition’, which shaped the study of US literature during the twentieth century. Reading texts such as The Valley of Decision and French Ways and Their Meaning, chapters on Wharton bring fresh attention to her exchanges with Harvard professors Charles Eliot Norton and Barrett Wendell. By locating Wharton in the history of literary studies in the US, American Snobs offers new perspectives on her thinking about education, race, and democracy.
This book breathes new life into the study of a set of ideas and authors, all of which are rich in their own right and illuminating for what they tell us about the period. Coit’s easy, writerly hand, her skilled close readings and her fluid movement between political context, literary history and detailed analysis are impressive.
– Lloyd Pratt, University of Oxford https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-american-snobs.html
| Teaching Edith Wharton’s Major Novels and Short Fiction | Ferda Asya | Palgrave Macmillanhttp://www.palgrave.comThis book meets the need of instructors for a resource that translates recent scholarship into pedagogy and implements innovative, adept, and practical approaches to teaching Edith Wharton’s versatile works and offers essays that will guide current and new instructors of Wharton’s fiction. |
This book translates recent scholarship into pedagogy for teaching Edith Wharton’s widely celebrated and less-known fiction to students in the twenty-first century. It comprises such themes as American and European cultures, material culture, identity, sexuality, class, gender, law, history, journalism, anarchism, war, addiction, disability, ecology, technology, and social media in historical, cultural, transcultural, international, and regional contexts. It includes Wharton’s works compared to those of other authors, taught online, read in foreign universities, and studied in film adaptations.
https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9783030527419
_______________________________________________
“Ferdâ Asya’s collection of essaysis the first book to address the crucial issue of teaching one of the most important masters of American fiction. The essays in this intriguing volume reveal a remarkable variety of useful pedagogical approaches to Wharton’s fiction. In their representation of a wide range of critical approaches and insistence on exploring the full range of her literary achievement, these essays provide new testimony to the enduring power of the writer and her work.”
– Alfred Bendixen, Princeton University, USA, and Executive Director of American Literature Association
“This is a rousing collection of essays on how to make Edith Wharton relevant to twenty-first century-students. With a deep understanding of the student mindset, this volume employs fresh insight and remarkable creativity to help a new generation grasp the more germane points of this surprisingly modern and still unmatched American author.”
– Jennie Fields, author of The Age of Desire (2012)and Atomic Love (2020)
“This volume offers essays that will guide new and experienced instructors of Wharton’s fiction. The contributors take a variety of Wharton’s texts as their subjects and approach the teaching of her work from a range of perspectives, from different theoretical contexts to varying roles in the curricula. This volume will spark new and creative approaches to teaching Wharton’s well-known and highly complex body of fiction.”
– Jennifer Haytock, Professor, SUNY Brockport, USA, and author of Edith Wharton and the Conversations of Literary Modernism (2008)
Rosedale in Love has been reissued with a new Foreword and Afterword by the author, and is available at Amazon and B&N for Kindle and Nook. Watch the book trailer.
In the glittering world of money-mad 1905 New York City, Jewish financier Simon Rosedale plans to force his way into high society through marriage and has his eye on Lily Bart. One of the most beautiful women in the city, Lily is a down-at-heels aristocrat plagued by gossip and might be vulnerable to his proposal. With his money and her style and connections, he can rise to the top—but will she lower herself to marry a Jew? Could such a marriage heal Rosedale’s secret shame, and will Florence Goodhart, the cousin who adores Rosedale, help or hinder his plans? Written in a period voice, Rosedale in Love audaciously revisions Edith Wharton’s beloved classic The House of Mirth, offering readers a timeless American story of greed, envy, scandal, love and revenge.
Lev Raphael is a prize-winning author, reviewer, and blogger who has published 26 books in a wide range of genres and seen his work translated into over a dozen languages. A former student of Wharton biographer Cynthia Griffin Wolff, Raphael has been reading and teaching Wharton for decades. He’s written a highly regarded biography/critical study of Wharton as well as an acclaimed comic mystery, The Edith Wharton Murders, that delves into the politics around her reputation. Special Archives at Michigan State University’s Library has purchased his literary papers in recognition of his contributions to American Literature.
“Richly textured and darkly witty, Rosedale in Love explores the inner life of outsiders, to whom the hidden give-and-take of high society is a language to be struggled with, for whom external wealth and inner impoverishment go hand in hand. Lev Raphael catches the subtlety of Wharton’s original, and enriches her exploration of a story in which love pulls against ambition, and shame is a daily taste in the mouth.”—Laurie R. King, author of Pirate King
The Edith Wharton Society 