The Cambridge Companion to Edith Wharton

This handbook provides fresh examinations of Wharton's fiction designed to engage the interest of both students and general readers.

The Cambridge Companion to Edith Wharton offers fresh examinations of Wharton's fiction designed both to engage the interest of the student or general reader encountering Wharton for the first time, and to be valuable to advanced scholars looking for new insights into her creative achievement.The Cambridge Companion to Edith Wharton offers a series of fresh examinations of Edith Wharton's fiction written both to meet the interest of the student or general reader who encounters this major American writer for the first time and to be valuable to advanced scholars looking for new insights into her creative achievement. The essays cover Wharton's most important novels as well as some of her shorter fiction, and utilise both traditional and innovative critical techniques, applying the perspectives of literary history, feminist theory, psychology or biography, sociology or anthropology, or social history. The Introduction supplies a valuable review of the history of Wharton criticism which shows how her writing has provoked varying responses from its first publication, and how current interests have emerged from earlier ones. A detailed chronology of Wharton's life and publications and a useful bibliography are also provided.