Edith Wharton and Cosmopolitanism
Edith Wharton and Cosmopolitanism
“These energizing, excellent essays address the international scope of Wharton’s writing and contribute to the growing fields of transatlantic, hemispheric, and global studies.”—Carol J. Singley, author of A Historical Guide to Edith Wharton
“Readers will emerge with a new respect for Wharton’s engagement with the world around her and for her ability to convey her particular vision in her literary works.”—Julie Olin-Ammentorp, author of Edith Wharton’s Writings from the Great War
Hailed for her remarkable social and psychological insights into the Gilded Age lives of privileged Americans, Edith Wharton, the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize, was also a transnational author who cultivated contradictory approaches to identity, difference, and belonging. As literary studies continue to expand beyond nation-based topics, readers are becoming more interested in the international scope of her life and writing.
Edith Wharton and Cosmopolitanism shows that Wharton was highly engaged with global issues of her time, due in part to her extensive travel abroad. Examining both her canonical and lesser-known works and including her art historical discoveries, her political writings, and her travel writing, the essays in this volume explore Wharton’s diverse, complex, and sometimes problematic relationship to a cosmopolitan vision.
Contributors: Ferdâ Asya | William Blazek | Rita Bode | Donna Campbell | Mary Carney | Clare Virginia Eby | June Howard | Meredith L. Goldsmith | Sharon Kim | D. Medina Lasansky | Maureen Montgomery | Emily J. Orlando | Margaret A. Toth | Gary Totten
Meredith L. Goldsmith, professor of English at Ursinus College, is coeditor of Middlebrow Moderns: Popular American Women Writers of the 1920s. Emily J. Orlando, associate professor of English at Fairfield University, is the author of Edith Wharton and the Visual Arts.
