Wharton is today recognized as a major writer of the first two decades of the twentieth century. She has written extensively on New York families with old money in struggle with social climbers. Her fiction belongs to the novel of manners tradition. Her prose is elegant and her plots are tightly constructed. A prolific writer, she received a Pulitzer Prize in 1921 and, two years later, she became the first woman to receive a Doctor of Letters degree from Yale University.

Selected Primary Works

The Greater Inclination (a collection of stories), 1899; The Valley of Decision (novel), 1902; The House of Mirth, 1905; Madame de Treymes, 1907; Ethan Frome, 1911; The Reef (novel), 1912; The Custom of the Country, 1913; Summer, 1917; The Age of Innocence, 1920; Old New York, 1924; The Mother's Recompense, 1925; A Backward Glance (memoir), 1934; The Buccaneers, 1938 (completed by Marion Manwaring, 1993); many short stories, poems, and essays. 

The Uncollected Critical Writings of Edith Wharton. Wegener, Frederick (ed. and introd.). Princeton: Princeton UP, 1998.

Edith Wharton: Selected Poems. Auchincloss, Louis. ed. NY: Library of America, 2005.

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Armbruster, Elif S. Domestic Biographies: Stowe, Howells, James, and Wharton at Home. NY: Peter Lang, 2011.

Beer, Janet. Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Studies in Short Fiction. NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

Benert, Annette. The Architectural Imagination of Edith Wharton: Gender, Class, and Power in the Progressive Era. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2007.

Dean, Sharon L. Constance Fenimore Woolson and Edith Wharton: Perspectives on Landscape and Art. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 2002.

Bourassa, Alan. Deleuze and American Literature: Affect and Virtuality in Faulkner, Wharton, Ellison, and McCarthy. NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

Farwell, Tricia M. Love and Death in Edith Wharton's Fiction. NY: Peter Lang, 2006.

Haytock, Jennifer. Edith Wharton and the Conversations of Literary Modernism. NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

Hoeller, Hildegard. Edith Wharton's Dialogue with Realism and Sentimental Fiction. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2000.

Horan, Richard. Seeds: One Man's Serendipitious Journey to Find the Trees That Inspired Famous American Writers from Faulkner to Kerouac, Welty to Wharton. NY: Harper Perennial, 2011.

Joslin, Katherine. Edith Wharton and the Making of Fashion. Durham: U of New Hampshire P, 2009.

Killoran, Helen. The Critical Reception of Edith Wharton. Columbia: Camden House, 2001.

Lee, Hermione. Edith Wharton. NY: Knopf, 2007.

Olin-Ammentorp, Julie. Edith Wharton's Writings from the Great War. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2004.

Orlando, Emily J. Edith Wharton and the Visual Arts. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 2007.

Peel, Robin. Apart from Modernism: Edith Wharton, Politics, and Fiction Before World War I. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2005.

Pennell, Melissa M. Student Companion to Edith Wharton. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2003.

Pizer, Donald. American Naturalism and the Jews: Garland, Norris, Dreiser, Wharton, and Cather. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2008.

Preston, Claire. Edith Wharton's Social Register. NY: Macmillan, 2000.

Sherman, Sarah W. Sacramental Shopping: Louisa May Alcott, Edith Wharton, and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism. Durham: U of New Hampshire P, 2013.

Sloboda, Noel. The Making of Americans in Paris: The Autobiographies of Edith Wharton and Gertrude Stein. NY: Peter Lang, 2008.

Smith, Christopher. Readings on Ethan Frome. San Diego: Greenhaven, 2000.

Sterling, Charlee. Irony in the Short Stories of Edith Wharton. Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 2005.

Thompson, Stephanie L. Influencing America's Tastes: Realism in the Works of Warton, Cather and Hurst. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2002.

Williams, Deborah L. Not in Sisterhood: Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Zona Gale, and the Politics of Female Authorship. NY: Palgrave, 2001.

 MLA Style Citation of this Web Page

Reuben, Paul P. "Chapter 7: Edith Wharton." PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference Guide. URL: http://www.paulreuben.website/pal/chap7/wharton.html (provide page date or date of your login).  

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