Edith Wharton

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Janet Beer Goodwyn

   Pages 1-7

3. The Valley of Decision

   • Janet Beer Goodwyn

   Pages 8-24

4. The Customs of the Country: France

   • Janet Beer Goodwyn

   Pages 25-43

5. Fighting France

   • Janet Beer Goodwyn

   Pages 44-55

6. Inside the House of Mirth

   • Janet Beer Goodwyn

   Pages 56-80

7. The Writing of American Fiction

   • Janet Beer Goodwyn

   Pages 81-102

8. ‘Literature’ or the Various Forms of Autobiography

   • Janet Beer Goodwyn

   Pages 103-130

9. The Age of Innocence

   • Janet Beer Goodwyn

   Pages 131-153

10. Conclusion

    • Janet Beer Goodwyn

    Pages 154-154

11. Back Matter

    Pages 155-171

    PDF

'...in this study, Goodwyn sets the standard for Wharton criticism.' - Judith E. Funston, American Literature 'Janet Goodwyn sets out, by looking at Wharton's appropriation of different cultures, to nail the 'canard' that she was 'but a pale imitator of Henry James' - Hermione Lee, Times Literary Supplement `The Land of Letters was henceforth to be my country and I gloried in my new citizenship'. So Edith Wharton described her elation upon the publication of her first collection of short stories; her nationality was henceforth `writer' and as such she moved with ease between landscapes, between cultures and between genres in the telling of her tales. In this acclaimed study of Wharton's work, the discussion is shaped by her use of specific landscapes and her consistent concern with ideas of place: the American's place in the Western world, the woman's place in her own and in European society, and the author's place in the larger life of a culture. Her landscapes, both actual and metaphorical, give structure and point to the individual texts and to the whole body of her work.

• America
• American literature
• Appropriation
• biography
• corpus
• English literature
• fiction
• France
• Henry James
• individual
• knowledge
• literature
• metaphor
• structure
• writing

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