The Stories of Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton was a prolific writer of stories - maybe call them tales - but not short stories because hardly any of them are what we would now classify as short. She favoured the extended story, often with multiple characters and issues. She produced over eighty stories - nearly as many as her good friend Henry James who clocked up over a hundred - and they cover an impressive range of topics and themes. Social climbing and snobbery; Anglo-American relations; art and artists; tragedies of everyday life; and even ghost stories, for which she had a great fondness. She also produced these shorter works between an impressive series of full length novels, such as The House of Mirth, The Age of Innocence, and The Custom of the Country.

It has to be said that they vary in quality. Some of the weakest seem to have been written just to fill space in the many literary and upmarket magazines for which she wrote. But her writing style is fluent and elegant no matter what her subject, and the best of her tales are tightly constructed masterpieces of the genre. Xingu is a very amusing and much anthologised satire of a ladies' reading circle; After Holbein is a macabre account of old age and senility (prefiguring Evelyn Waugh); The Pretext is an almost heartbreaking study of a middle-aged woman who has fallen in love with a younger man; and The Touchstone (one of her earliest and longest tales, which qualifies as a novella) might well contain a self-portrait of Wharton herself in the figure of Margaret Aubyn, a novelist whose early love letters to a young man cause him moral problems long after her death.

Edith Wharton tutorials

Edith Wharton was a best-selling novelist, a Pulitzer prizewinner, and a close friend of Henry James. She also wrote a prodigious number of short stories and novellas - and the range of topics she covers is quite amazing. Her tales range from grim naturalistic depictions of lower-class life in New York, as in Bunner Sisters, via social satires such as The Other Two (a woman juggling two ex-husbands) and her best-known work Roman Fever, to ghost stories such as Afterward and The Triumph of Night. Even an early work such as Sanctuary shows amazing control of dramatic effects and her feeling for the shapliness of a form which is half way between a long story and a short novel. Full plot synopses and critical commentaries on all our new tutorials on these works - plus a nice documentary video showing the forty-two room house she designed and furnished herself.

Edith Wharton - stories

My summer reading week(s) recently included two stunning texts by Edith Wharton. She's best known for her novels The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence, but she was also a prolific writer of short stories. The first is a murder mystery which is loosely based on the notorious 1892 Lizzie Borden case. Confession explores a puzzling set of circumstances seen through the eyes of a decent but slightly naive narrator who meets a beautiful but enigmatic woman in a Swiss hotel and pursues her to Italy. The other tale, Roman Fever, is her best known and most frequently anthologised. It's a witty and subtle study in manners as two middle-aged American women sit overlooking Rome after lunch, reminiscing about their younger days. One of the ladies comes in for a beautifully delivered shock.

Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton is one of the most unjustly neglected writers of the early modernist period. She was a close friend of Henry James, and even wrote somewhat in his style, but her reputation has not survived as well as his, even though she was a best-selling novelist in her time. We've made a modest effort to rectify this situation from a UK perspective by featuring an impressive biography, as well as creating study guides to her greatest novels The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth, and The Custom of the Country, as well as her devastatingly powerful novella, Ethan Frome.

Edith Wharton - An Illustrated Biography

Edith wharton sure did have it all. She was born of rich parents; she lived in Italy and France as a young girl, and picked up the languages. Married young to rich and handsome husband. Wrote novels - which became best-sellers. Was friends with Henry James, Bernard Berenson, and met Serge Diaghilev. Had love affair: got divorced. Won the Legion of Honour for her work in the first world war. Established large houses and gardens outside Paris and in Provence. Became an expert on garden and interior design. Wrote more best-sellers. And lived until nearly eighty. What's more, her writiting is funny, and very good. More here