Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937) was an American author during the realism movement. Her works include The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth, Ethan Forme, and The Old Maid.
- Edith WhartonEdith Wharton (1862-1937) was born into a tightly controlled society at a time when women were discouraged from achieving anything beyond a proper marriage.
- Edith Wharton: Library of AmericaLibrary of American entry on Edit Wharton.
Research & Reference
- Edith Wharton: Credo ReferenceA Credo Reference landing page on Edith Wharton. This page includes links to reference works, journal articles, and a mind map.
- Edith Wharton Collection: YaleThe Edith Wharton Collection at The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, estimated at some 50,000 items, consists of manuscripts, letters, photographs, and miscellaneous personal papers that belonged to Edith Wharton and were part of her estate at her death; letters, manuscript material, photographs and related papers from the Louis Auchincloss, Gaillard Lapsley, Percy Lubbock, Oscar Lichtenberg, and Georges Markow-Totevy collections of Wharton material; and essays, articles, and other material pertaining to Wharton's life and writings. The collection spans the years from Edith Wharton's early life (1876) to recent Wharton scholarship (1980), with the bulk of material covering the years of Wharton's greatest literary productivity, 1910 to 1937.
- Wharton, Edith: American National BiographyAn American National Biography page on Edith Wharton.
Streaming Media
- The Buccaneers: BBC SeriesA lavish, star-studded adaptation of Edith Wharton's final novel set in the early 1870s. Seen through the eyes of a family governess, four ambitious American girls secure husbands and position in England in order to live happily ever after. But life bears little resemblance to the fairytales; and castles appear a lot less magical when you have to live in them. They soon find themselves trapped by the trappings of wealth, and discover that beneath fine manners and social graces lie some very shabby vices.
- Edith Wharton: The Sense of HarmonyFrom filmmaker Elizabeth Lennard comes a definitive look at one of the greatest visionaries of the Gilded Age, a literary genius, cosmopolitan and activist, whose vivid portrayal of society still resonates today: Edith Wharton. This documentary portrait takes a sweeping look at the life and legacy of the literary master and includes the only known film footage of Wharton in existence.
Author's Works & Perspectives
Edith Wharton: Novellas and Other Writings (LOA #47)
Collected in this Library of America volume are no fewer than six of the works of Edith Wharton: novels, novellas, and her renowned autobiography, A Backward Glance. Together they represent nearly a quarter century in the productive life of one of the most accomplished and admired of American writers. Madame de Treymes (1907) is set in fashionable Paris society, where a once free-spirited American woman is trying to extricate herself, with the help of a fellow countryman, from her marriage to an aristocratic Frenchman. Such a village is the scene of Ethan Frome (1911), a tale of marital entrapment even more relentless. Ethan's unhappy marriage and his desperate love for his wife's cousin Mattie drive him to an act of shattering violence. The magnificent coda is a classic of American realistic fiction. Set in the same region of the Berkshires, Wharton called Summer (1917) "the Hot Ethan." It is the story of a young woman's initiation into the intricate sexual and social mores of a small town--and her revolt against them. Observations of the American scene continue in the four novellas that make up Old New York (1924). They take us from the 1840s of "False Dawn," where a young man is ostracized for his avant garde taste in art, to the 1870s of "New Year's Day," where a domestic scandal unfolds. The poignancies of parenthood are also the theme of The Mother's Recompense (1925). Kate Clephane, a divorced woman who has been living in Europe, returns to New York to find her former lover engaged to her daughter--and to face the emotional tangles of this unusual triangle. The fullest portraits of New York are saved for A Backward Glance (1934), one of the most compelling of American autobiographies. Another perspective is offered in "Life and I," an autobiographical fragment that shows a younger Wharton writing with great frankness about her early life. It is published here for the first time. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
Edith Wharton
This book uses traditional methods to show that Edith Wharton's learning in literature and the fine arts was unusually masterful, that she applied her knowledge to create new models of literary allusion, and that in her work she planted clues to personal secrets. The effects of this study is to require reassessment not only of the critical possibilities of Edith Wharton's work and the private life about which she was so reticent but also of her position in American literature. The book concludes with the assertion that, as a bridge between the Victorian and modern periods, Edith Wharton should stand independently as an American writer of the first rank.
Edith Wharton
This an American writer.--The New York Times Book Review.