Edith Wharton: The House of Mirth,The Custom of the Country, The Age of Innocence [Paperback]

Stuart Hutchinson (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1840460237 | ISBN-13: 978-1840460230 | Publication Date: December 2002

In this Readers' Guide, Stuart Hutchinson analyzes the most significant writings on The House of Mirth (1905), The Custom of the Country (1913) and The Age of Innocence (1920). Beginning with Wharton's own comments on the novels, he moves on to the contemporary responses of Henry James and challenging reviews such as Katherine Mansfield's, before turning to stimulating critical writing from later perspectives. Geoffrey Walton, Blake Nevius, and R. W. B. Lewis feature among others, followed by feminist insights from Cynthia Griffin Wolff, Elizabeth Ammons, and Elaine Showalter. This Guide is an essential resource for understanding the changing responses to Wharton's work.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

One of America's most beloved novelists, Wharton cut a niche for herself in American letters as the leading chronicler of upper-crust New York society and the purveyor of a style that mixed the respective strengths of American naturalism and the realism of her colleague and mentor, Henry James. In this fascinating collection of Wharton's critical prose, Wegener demonstrates that Wharton was a far better critic than she realized, and one only regrets, after reading these works, that she was not more prolific in that arena. Wegener's introduction to this collection benefits from being scholarly, readable and cogent. As he suggests, Wharton is simply a good critic, which is justification enough to reprint many of these otherwise inaccessible items. Even where one disagrees with Wharton's assessments (she held low opinions of Lawrence and Woolf) and assertions (the lives of the rich make for better novels than those of the poor), her criticisms remain rooted in an appreciation of novel-writing few today can match. Ably aided by Wegener's careful annotations, lovers of Wharton will be pleased by the variety of assembled material: critical essays, literary and theater reviews, tributes and eulogies, prefaces, introductions and forewords to her writings and those of others as well as several unpublished items. This volume is easily recommended to Wharton fans, scholars and scholarly libraries.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

From this collection of critical writings, Wharton emerges as a literary critic whose voice is characterized at once by an ambivalence toward the critical role and a sententious prose that imitates the critical style of Henry James and William Dean Howells. Editor Wegener (English, Baruch Coll.) divides the collection into five sections, the first two of which contain reviews and essays dating from 1896 to 1934. A third section collects Wharton's tributes and eulogies to her friends, and a fourth section contains the introductions Wharton wrote for a number of books. The final section collects Wharton's "self-reconsiderations" of Ethan Frome and The House of Mirth. Typical of the tone of Wharton's criticism is this sentence from the essay "The Criticism of Fiction": "All intelligent criticism of art presupposes an intelligent criticism of life in general." This collection provides a glimpse of a different side of Wharton, but, given its subject matter, only academic libraries will want to purchase it.?Henry L. Carrigan Jr., Westerville P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (December 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1840460237
• ISBN-13: 978-1840460230
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.5 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,609,016 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)