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An Ethic of Innocence examines representations of women in American and British fin-de-siècle and modern literature who seem "not to know" things. These naïve fools, Pollyannaish dupes, obedient traditionalists, or regressive anti-feminists have been dismissed by critics as conservative, backward, and out of sync with, even threatening to, modern feminist goals. Grounded in the late nineteenth century's changing political and generic representations of women, this book provides a novel interpretative framework for reconsidering the epistemic claims of these women. Kristen L. Renzi analyzes characters from works by Henry James, Frank Norris, Ann Petry, Rebecca West, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, and others, to argue that these feminine figures who choose not to know actually represent and model crucial pragmatic strategies by which modern and contemporary subjects navigate, survive, and even oppose gender oppression.
'The war went on; life went on; Paris went on.' In A Son at the Front, her only novel dealing with World War I, Edith Wharton offers a vivid portrait of American expatriate life in Paris, as well as a gripping portrayal of a complex modern family. The painter John Campton is divorced from the mother of his son, George, and although Julia's second husband, Anderson Brant, a wealthy banker, has been a devoted stepfather to George, Campton resents his presence in George's life. This family drama is ruptured by the outbreak of fighting, which requires George, born in France, to report for military service despite his parents' belief that he should be exempted. Reflecting Wharton's own experiences, A Son at the Front documents the shock of the outbreak of war, the early hope of a quick victory for the Allies, the terrible human cost of the war, and the relief when, belatedly, the United States enters the conflict. The novel's tone reflects the realities of life in Paris, and the profound disillusionment of the post-war period, standing as not only an important part of Wharton's oeuvre, but a landmark in the literature of the First World War.
This book studies literary regionalism and it shows that one of the ways we imagine the world is through writing and reading about particular places. It explores how writers are shaped by particular places and how their stories shape our understanding of localities and the globe.
Uncovers new evidence and presents new ideas that invite us to reconsider our understanding Edith Wharton's life and career.
Recovers the careers of four US women serial writers, and establishes a new archive for American literary studies.
No. 2, pt. 2 of November issue each year from v. 19-47; 1963-70 and v. 55- 1972- contain the Abstracts of papers presented at the annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology, 3d-10th; 1963-70 and 12th- 1972- .
Examining the personal library and the making of self When writer Edith Wharton died in 1937, without any children, her library of more than five thousand volumes was divided and subsequently sold. Decades later, it was reassembled and returned to The Mount, her historic Massachusetts estate. What a Library Means to a Woman examines personal libraries as technologies of self-creation in modern America, focusing on Wharton and her remarkable collection of books. Sheila Liming explores the connection between libraries and self-making in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American culture, from the 1860s to the 1930s. She tells the story of Wharton’s library in concert with Wharton ...
Edith Wharton’s The Decoration of Houses (1897), co-written with the architect Ogden Codman Jr., brought transatlantic fame to a writer best known as a chronicler of Gilded Age New York. In their decorating guidebook, Wharton and Codman, who collaborated on the design of the author’s Massachusetts home, The Mount, advocated for simple but classically informed choices that resonate profoundly today. The book crystallizes what Wharton found to be troubling in Americans’ enthusiasm for ostentation at the turn of the twentieth century—the late Victorian equivalent of the modern "McMansion." This annotated edition includes a comprehensive introduction that provides relevant biographical information on Wharton, as well as her literary work and how her perspectives on homeownership and décor informed her writing. The reproduction of the book’s original illustrations alongside new annotations allows readers to visualize how Wharton’s aesthetic preferences informed her writing, life, and charitable works. Valuable to Wharton scholars as well as students of design, The Decoration of Houses presents a definitive look at the tastes of a literary icon.
Edith Wharton was not only the author of novels and short stories but also of drama, poetry, autobiography, interior decoration, and travel writing. This study focuses on Wharton’s symbolic representations of architecture in her travel writings. It shows how a network of allusions to travel writing and art history books influenced Wharton’s representations of architectural and natural spaces. The book demonstrates Wharton’s complex relationship to works of art historians (John Ruskin, Émile Mâle, Arthur C. Porter) and travel authors (Wolfgang Goethe, Henry Adams, Henry James) in the trajectory of her travel writing. Kovács surveys how the acknowledgment of Wharton’s sources sheds light both on the author’s model of aesthetic understanding and scenic architectural descriptions, and how the shock of the Great War changed Wharton’s travel destinations but not her symbolic view of architecture as a mediator of things past. Wharton’s symbolic representations of architecture provide a new key to her travel writings.
Bringing together leading voices from across the globe, The Bloomsbury Handbook to Edith Wharton represents state-of-the-art scholarship on the American writer Edith Wharton, once primarily known as a New York novelist. Focusing on Wharton's extensive body of work and renaissance across 21st-century popular culture, chapters consider: - Wharton in the context of queer studies, race studies, whiteness studies, age studies, disability studies, anthropological studies, and economics; - Wharton's achievements in genres for which she deserves to be better known: poetry, drama, the short story, and non-fiction prose; - Comparative studies with Christina Rossetti, Henry James, and Willa Cather; -Th...