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;
-The places and cultures Wharton documented in her writing, including France, Greece, Italy, and Morocco;
- Wharton's work as a reader and writer and her intersections with film and the digital humanities.
Book-ended by Dale Bauer and Elaine Showalter, and with a foreword by the Director and senior staff at The Mount, Wharton's historic Massachusetts home, the Handbook underscores Wharton's lasting impact for our new Gilded Age. It is an indispensable resource for readers interested in Wharton and 19th- and 20th-century literature and culture.
Through invigorated theoretical frameworks that cross disciplines, Orlando's contributors effectively draw attention to the wide range of complexities and complications that Wharton's works reveal in both content and method. A multi-gifted Wharton shines brightly here.
