Edith Wharton and Genre: Beyond Fiction

ISBN-13: 9781349595594 / Angielski

Laura Rattray

Opis

Based on extensive new archival research, Edith Wharton and Genre: Beyond Fiction offers the first study of Wharton's full engagement with original writing in genres outside those with which she has been most closely identified. So much more than an acclaimed novelist and short story writer, Wharton is reconsidered in this book as a controversial playwright, a gifted poet, a trailblazing travel writer, an innovative and subversive critic, a hugely influential design writer, and an author who overturned the conventions of autobiographical form. Her versatility across genres did not represent brief sidesteps, temporary diversions from what has long been read as her primary role as novelist. Each was pursued fully and whole-heartedly, speaking to Wharton's very sense of herself as an artist and her connected vision of artistry and art. The stories of these other Edith Whartons, born through her extraordinary dexterity across a wide range of genres, and their impact on our understanding of her career, are the focus of this new study, revealing a bolder, more diverse, subversive and radical writer than has long been supposed.

Recenzje

"Laura Rattray expands our visions of Edith Wharton and, in doing so, makes Wharton's life and authorship far more representative of women's experience than previously understood. Edith Wharton and Genre is indispensable reading not only for Wharton scholars but also all those interested in women's writing across genre." (Myrto Drizou, Women's Studies, February 1, 2021)

Spis treści

 1. Introduction.

2. Edith Wharton as Poet.

3. Playwriting.

4. Travel Writings.

5. Architecture and Design.

6. Critical Writings and Literary Theory.

7. Life Writings.

8. Afterword.

O autorze

Laura Rattray is Reader in American Literature at the University of Glasgow,

Scotland, and Director of its Centre for American Studies. Her work on Wharton

includes, as editor, Edith Wharton in Context (2012), The Unpublished Writings of

Edith Wharton (2009), Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country (2010), Summer

(2015) and, with Jennifer Haytock, The New Edith Wharton Studies (2019).

Blurb

‘In Rattray’s hands, Edith Wharton is re-presented as a writer mastering a wide

range of genres beyond the celebrated fiction. Wharton’s achievements in

poetry, drama, architecture and design, criticism, memoir, and travel writing

emerge as sites for her most confident, radical experiments. This game-changing

book will lay to rest the image of the grand dame, showing Wharton to defy

categorization and to be as “large” and full of “multitudes” as the Whitman she

so admired.’

— Emily J. Orlando, Professor of English at Fairfield University, USA,

and author of Edith Wharton and the Visual Arts (2007)

Based on extensive new archival research, Edith Wharton and Genre: Beyond

Fiction offers the first study of Wharton’s full engagement with original writing in

genres outside those with which she has been most closely identified. So much

more than an acclaimed novelist and short story writer, Wharton is reconsidered

in this book as a controversial playwright, a gifted poet, a trailblazing travel

writer, an innovative and subversive critic, a hugely influential design writer, and

an author who overturned the conventions of autobiographical form. Her

versatility across genres did not represent brief sidesteps, temporary diversions

from what has long been read as her primary role as novelist. Each was pursued

fully and whole-heartedly, speaking to Wharton’s very sense of herself as an

artist and her connected vision of artistry and art. The stories of these other Edith

Whartons, born through her extraordinary dexterity across a wide range of

genres, and their impact on our understanding of her career, are the focus of this

new study, revealing a bolder, more diverse, subversive and radical writer than

has long been supposed.