An annotated bibliography of Wharton's works:

Verses. Newport, RI: C. E. Hammett, Jr., 1878. Poems which Wharton's mother arranged to have privately and anonymously printed.

“Mrs. Manstey's View.” Scribner's July 1891.

“The Fullness of Life.” Scribner's December 1893.

“That Good May Come.” Scribner's May 1894.

“The Lamp of Psyche.” Scribner's October 1895.

“The Valley of Childish Things.” Scribner's July 1896.

The Decoration of Houses. With Ogden Codman. New York: Scribners, 1897. Macmillan had originally contracted the work but then released it after a financial crisis on Wall Street. A manual of tasteful interior decoration based on European principles of proportion and harmony, aimed at affluent Americans and critical of American house decoration that favored overstuffed and cluttered rooms.

The Greater Inclination. New York: Scribners, 1899. Wharton's first collection of short stories, containing “The Muse's Tragedy,” “A Journey,” “The Pelican,” “Souls Belated,” “A Coward,” “The Twilight of the God,” “A Cup of Cold Water,” and “The Portrait.”

“April Showers.” Youth's Companion August 1900.

The Touchstone. New York: Scribners, 1900. Wharton's first novella. About an impoverished lawyer who sells the love letters he received from a famous woman novelist after her death so that he can marry a young woman who, like him, is also poor.

Crucial Instances. New York: Scribners, 1901. Wharton's second collection of short stories, including “The Duchess at Prayer,” “The Angel at the Grave,” “The Recovery,” “Copy,” “The Rembrandt,” “The Moving Finger,” and “The Confessional.”

The Valley of Decision. New York: Scribners, 1902. Wharton's first novel. Set in eighteenth-century Italy, it is about the education of a young ducal heir as he wanders around Italy.

Sanctuary. New York: Scribners, 1903. A novella about a woman who marries into a family which has a skeleton in its closet.

Italian Villas and Their Gardens. New York: Century, 1904. A collection of sketches of more than 75 villas, concentrating on the aesthetic details of their gardens, and emphasizing the interconnection between the house, its gardens, and the surrounding landscape.

The Descent of Man and Other Stories. New York: Scribners, 1904. Wharton's third collection of short stories, including “The Descent of Man,” “The Other Two,” “Expiation,” “The Lady's Maid's Bell,” “The Mission of Jane,” “The Reckoning,” “The Letter,” “The Dilettante,” “The Quicksand,” and “A Venetian Night's Entertainment.”

Italian Backgrounds. New York: Scribners, 1905. A collection of essays that Wharton had been accumulating over the previous ten years, containing details about the landscape, towns and cities, art and architecture.

The House of Mirth. New York: Scribners, 1905. Wharton's first major literary success. The novel is about a 29-year-old woman, Lily Bart, who lives with her aunt in New York after her parents die. Aunt Peniston provides Lily with a small income but it does not quite cover her growing expenses as a member of fashionable society. Despite increasing pressure to marry a wealthy husband, Lily finds that she cannot bring herself to marry for money. She enters into a financial arrangement with Gus Trenor, the husband of one of her closest friends. She believes that he is investing her small income on the Stock Exchange; but, in fact, he gives her his own money and then expects favors in return. One of these “favors” is to be nice to a Jewish financier, Sim Rosedale, who is successful with his investments but who has yet to be socially accepted by the waspish elite of fashionable New York. Rosedale proposes marriage to Lily but she declines. Lily discovers the true nature of her financial arrangements with Trenor when he attempts to rape her one night after the opera. She vows to pay him back every penny in order to clear her name. With her reputation in tatters, her aunt scandalized by her behavior, and with growing debts, Lily accepts an invitation from the Dorsets to go on a Mediterranean cruise. Bertha Dorset has had several affairs, including one with a lawyer of modest means, Lawrence Selden, who is a close friend of Lily's. Prior to the cruise, Lily came into possession of Bertha's love letters to Selden which she purchased in order to protect Selden. Bertha uses Lily to distract her husband while she dallies with a young man, Ned Silverton, and, when George discovers his wife's flagrant infidelity, Bertha rescues herself by appeasing George and blaming Lily publicly for having designs on her husband. Selden, who is present at the dinner when Bertha destroys Lily's reputation, advises Lily to return to her aunt's house immediately. She does so, but Aunt Peniston dies soon afterwards and leaves the bulk of her estate to her cousin Grace Stepney. With a relatively small bequest of $10,000 which she cannot access from the lawyers for a year, Lily takes on various kinds of employment as a social secretary to socially ambitious parvenus, sinking lower and lower until she ends up as a milliner in a fashionable millinery. All the while, she has the means to restore herself to her former position—and Rosedale, the only one who knows this, tries to persuade her to blackmail Bertha with the love letters. Lily refuses. When she finally receives her inheritance, she pays up her bills, including the one to Trenor, and goes to visit Selden to say goodbye. While in Selden's flat, she burns the letters. She returns home, takes a large dose of laudanum, and dies.

Madame de Treymes. New York: Scribners, 1907. Set in Paris, the novella is about an American woman, Fanny Frisbee, who has married into the French aristocracy and had a son. She separates from her husband when she learns that he has been unfaithful to her and lives alone with her son. Her husband's family threatens to take custody of her son if she divorces and remarries. Fanny's sister-in-law, Madame de Treymes offers to intercede on her behalf when John Durham, an American, seeks to marry Fanny. She invites Durham to tea and tells him that she will persuade the family to allow Fanny to divorce if he will pay the gambling debts of her lover. He refuses.

The Fruit of the Tree. New York: Scribners, 1907. Set in a New England mill town, the story concerns Justine Brent who is looking after her childhood friend, Bessie Westmore Amherst. Justine comes from a wealthy family but has been left without means to support herself after the death of her parents and so trains as a nurse. Bessie is a frivolous and immature woman. Bessie's first husband was a poor employer and working conditions in his mills were deplorable. After he dies, Bessie learns of this from a manager, John Amherst, and she vow to reform working practices in the mills. However, after marrying Amherst, she reneges on her promise. Amherst, disgusted with her self-centeredness, leaves her. Bessie is critically injured in a riding accident and the doctor tries to keep her alive long enough for her husband and father to arrive. Bessie, however, cannot bear the pain and begs Justine to inject her with a lethal dose of morphine. Justine later marries Amherst and together they work to improve conditions in the mills. Bessie's doctor, however, blackmails Justine over her illegal act of euthanasia.

“Les Metteurs en Scène.” Revue des Deux Mondes October 1908. Written in French.

The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories. New York: Scribners, 1908. Wharton's fourth collection of short stories, containing “The Hermit and the Wild Woman,” “The Last Asset,” “In Trust,” “The Pretext,” “The Verdict,” “The Potboiler,” and “The Best Man.”

A Motor-Flight Through France. New York: Scribners, 1908. A collection of travel essays based on three automobile tours of France undertaken between 1906 and 1907, taking in Picardy, Normandy and Orléans.

Artemis to Actaeon and other Verse. New York: Scribners, 1909.

Tales of Men and Ghosts. New York: Scribners, 1910. Wharton's fifth collection of short stories, including “The Bolted Door,” “His Father's Son,” “The Daunt Diana,” “The Debt,” “Full Circles,” “The Legend,” “The Eyes,” “The Blond Beast,” “Afterward,” and “The Letters.”

Ethan Frome. New York: Scribners, 1911. One of Wharton's best-known novels, although sales were poor when it first came out, it is about a married man, Ethan Frome, who has a small farm in rural Massachusetts. Ethan falls in love with his wife's cousin, Mattie Silver, who has come to live with them in order to look after the rather sickly and hypochondriac Zeena. When Zeena finds out she sends Mattie away. Ethan accompanies Mattie to the station and, before the train arrives, persuades her to come for one last sled-ride on School House Hill. At the top of the hill, they declare their love for each other and, realizing that they cannot bear to be separated, resolve to kill themselves by aiming the sled at a large elm. However, they survive the crash and Mattie is permanently disabled while Ethan is crippled. Mattie, embittered by her fate, returns to live with the Fromes and Zeena becomes her nurse.

The Reef. New York: Scribners, 1912. Another tale about thwarted marital plans, this is a story about George Darrow, an American diplomat, who wants to marry Anna Leath, a widow, whom he had known and loved before her marriage. On his way to visit her in France, Darrow receives a telegram from Anna putting him off. While in Paris, he has an affair with a young American governess, Sophie Vyner. A few months? later, Anna invites Darrow to visit her at her country house, where he finds Sophie Vyner employed as the governess to Anna's daughter, Effie, and engaged to her stepson, Owen. Owen reveals to Anna that he had seen Darrow and Sophie together in Paris and Anna refuses to marry Darrow.

The Custom of the Country. New York: Scribners, 1913. The second of Wharton's novels about contemporary New York society, this one centers around a socially ambitious woman who is absolutely ruthless in getting what she wants. Undine Spragg, the daughter of a new Midwestern millionaire, comes with her family to New York, where she attracts the attention of a young lawyer, Ralph Marvell from an old New York family. Smitten with her good looks, Marvell marries Undine and hopes that she will become his soul-mate. Undine, however, has other ideas and, bored with Ralph and his literary tastes, insists on returning to Paris during their honeymoon so that she can shop and mix with society. Undine soon impoverishes Ralph with her expensive lifestyle and abandons both him and their son. She concocts a story about his maltreatment of her in her application for divorce, which shames Ralph and his family. Seeking respectability, she plans to marry a French aristocrat, Raymond de Chelles and sends for her son. Ralph is sickened by Undine's actions and also learns for the first time that she had been a divorcée when he married her. A broken man, he kills himself. Now a widow, Undine marries Chelles. Meanwhile, Undine, assuming that she will now enjoy the delights of Parisian high society, is taken aback when she finds that Chelles' idea of married life involves living frugally on the family's country estate. Frustrated with the strictures of French aristocratic family life, Undine leaves Chelles, secures a quick divorce in Reno, and remarries her first husband, Elmer Moffatt, now a multimillionaire and an established figures in New York society.

Fighting France, from Dunkerque to Belfort. New York: Scribners, 1915. Based on articles written for American newspapers

The Book of the Homeless. New York: Scribners, 1916 and London: Macmillan, 1916. Includes illustrations by Monet, Renoir, Rodin and Sargent; poems by Rupert Brooke, Paul Claudel, Jean-Paul Cocteau, Thomas Hardy, George Santayana, and William Butler Yeats; and prose from Paul Bourget, Joseph Conrad, and Henry James.

Xingu and Other Stories. New York: Scribners, 1916. Wharton's sixth collection of short stories, containing “Xingu,” “Coming Home,” “Autre Temps …,” “Kerfol,” “The Long Run,” “The Triumph of the Night,” and “The Choice” and “The Bunner Sisters.” The latter was a novella written in 1892 which Scribners had then rejected.

Summer. New York: Appleton, 1917. This was Wharton's first novel published by Appleton. Despite its later success, it was panned by American critics and praised by English ones. It is about Charity Royall, daughter of an outlaw, who comes to live with Lawyer Royall in rural Massachusetts. Charity rejects an offer of marriage from Royall and goes to work as a librarian in a nearby town, where she has an affair with a young architect and becomes pregnant. Lucius Harney, the architect, abandons her and marries a woman of good family. Charity returns to the mountain where she was born, hiding herself away in shame, but Royall comes to rescue her again and marries her.

The Marne. New York: Appleton, 1918. About a young American who is wounded at the Battle of the Marne.

French Ways and Their Meaning. New York: Appleton, 1919. Exposition on French life and thought, originally intended for U.S. servicemen stationed in France after the 1st World War. Helps to explain why Wharton expatriated herself to France.

The Age of Innocence. New York: Appleton, 1920. The third major novel about New York society, set in the 1870s. The central character is Newland Archer, a lawyer, who becomes engaged in May Welland just at the time when her cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska, is visiting the family in New York. The Countess is estranged from her Polish husband and old New York finds her somewhat unconventional. Newland falls in love with Ellen but proceeds with his marriage to May. He is asked by the family to assist in the legal arrangements for Ellen's separation and Newland is able to use this as a pretext to see Ellen. Their relationship develops and Newland wants to leave his wife and go away with Ellen, but Ellen tells Newland there's no future for them. She offers “to come to him once” but the meeting never eventuates. Newland and May hold a dinner party as a farewell for Ellen who is returning to Europe. Newland is still of a mind to join her but, after dinner, May gives Newland the news that she is pregnant. Newland suddenly realizes that the family are aware of his feelings for Ellen and that they have conspired to bring about an agreeable solution that will maintain order and harmony in their society. The novel closes at a time 26 years later, when May has died and when Newland visits Paris with his son, Dallas, who arranges for them to visit Ellen, now a widow. Newland, however, decides to let Dallas visit Ellen on his own.

In Morocco. New York: Scribners, 1920. A travel book based on Wharton's journey to Morocco during the First World War at the invitation of General Hubert Lyautey, Resident General of Morocco.

The Glimpses of the Moon. New York: Appleton, 1922. Another story dealing with money and marriage in the upper classes. Set in the 1920s, the story revolves around a young penniless couple, Nick Lansing and Susy Branch, who get married and travel around living off their society friends. Although they marry for love, they have a pact that if either should have the opportunity “to do better,” they will abandon their marriage.

A Son at the Front. New York: Scribners, 1923. About an expatriate American artist and divorcé, John Campton, whose son, George, is born in France and called up to fight. Campton lives a solitary existence, his wife having left him and taken away their son when he was an infant. He sees his son once a week but laments the distance between them. Campton paints a portrait of him which establishes his reputation as an artist. After his son's death in the war, both this portrait and the early sketch he drew for it become caught up in a tussle involving George's stepfather, a millionaire businessman. The novel ends with Compton contemplating whether to design a monument for his son's grave.

Old New York. New York: Appleton, 1924. A collection of four novellas: “False Dawn,” “Old Maid,” “The Spark,” and “New Year's Day.”

The Mother's Recompense. New York: Appleton, 1925. About a woman, Kate Clephane, who leaves her husband and three-year-old daughter, Anne, to go to live in Europe. Things do not turn out well for Kate in Europe and she lives a lonely and desultory existence. Fifteen years later, after the death of Kate's husband, she receives an invitation from her daughter to come and visit her in New York. Kate discovers that Anne is engaged to a journalist, Chris Fenno, with whom she has had an affair during the war. Kate does not disclose the affair to Anne but tried to prevent the marriage, aware of Fenno's capacity for cruelty. She does not succeed and returns to Europe, giving up her chance of rehabilitation in New York society by marrying Fred Landers.

The Writing of Fiction. New York: Scribners, 1925.

Here and Beyond. New York: Appleton, 1926. Wharton's seventh collection of short stories, containing “Miss Mary Pask,” “The Young Gentlemen,” “Bewitched,” “The Seed of the Faith,” “The Temperate Zone,” and “Velvet Ear-Pads.”

Twelve Poems. London: Medici Society, 1926.

Twilight Sleep. New York: Appleton, 1927. The story concerns a woman, Pauline Manford, who has everything and lives a busy life engaging in philanthropy, entertaining, attending lectures and taking rest cures. She is married first to Arthur Wyant, who comes from an old New York family, and then to Dexter Manford, a lawyer. Pauline tries to shut herself off from anything unpleasant: rumors about her seer, Mahatma, and his School of Oriental Thought; her daughter's relationship with a married man; Manford's indifference towards her; her son's marital problems.

The Children. New York: Appleton, 1928. A novel about a middle-aged bachelor, who has spent much of his working life outside of the U.S. and who comes across seven children who each have at least one parent in common. Joyce and Cliffe Wheater were originally married, but got divorced and married other spouses. By the time they get back together again, they have acquired five more children and produce one more of their own. When Martin Boyne first meets the children, they are en route from Algiers to Venice to join their parents. The eldest is Judith, a girl of 15, who takes on the maternal role for her siblings. Boyne tries to help them stay together and becomes attached to Judith. Although Boyne is planning to marry Rose Sellars, he breaks off his engagement and proposes to Judith but she does not take him seriously.

Hudson River Bracketed. New York: Appleton, 1929. Vance Weston, a young writer from the Midwest, goes to stay with his mother's cousin in New York after recovering from typhoid fever. He meets Halo Spear, a distant relative, who comes from an old but impoverished family and who is of a literary bent. Vance marries his cousin, Laura Lou, while Halo marries the wealthy Lewis Tarrant. Vance pursues his literary career in New York and meets Halo again after his wife has died. Halo has left Tarrant (but has not divorced him) and she and Vance realize their feelings for each other.

Certain People. New York: Appleton, 1930. Wharton eighth collection of short stories, containing “Atrophy,” “A Bottle of Perrier,” “After Holbein,” “Dieu D'Amour,” “The Refugees,” and “Mr. Jones.”

The Gods Arrive. New York: Appleton, 1932. This novel continues the story about Vance Weston and Halo Spear. Vance publishes a successful novel and they sail for Europe, passing themselves off as Mr. and Mrs. Weston. Things do not work out for them and Weston abandons Halo who is pregnant. Tarrant finds her and asks her to return home with him, but she refuses. Halo does, however, return to her parents' home on the Hudson (which she has inherited) to have her illegitimate child. Tarrant finally agrees to a divorce. Vance, a failed writer, returns to her and commits himself to marriage with Halo.

Human Nature. New York: Appleton, 1933. Wharton ninth collection of short stories, containing “Her Son,” “The Day of the Funeral,” “A Glimpse,” “Joy in the House,” and “Diagnosis.”

A Backward Glance. New York: Appleton, 1934. Wharton's autobiography.

The World Over. New York: Appleton, 1936. Wharton tenth collection of short stories, containing “Charm Incorporated,” “Pomegranate Seed,” “Permanent Wave,” “Confession,” “Roman Fever,” “The Looking Glass,” and “Duration.”

POSTHUMOUS PUBLICATIONS

Ghosts. New York: Appleton, 1937. A collection of her ghost stories which had appeared in her collections of short stories, including, “All Souls',” “The Eyes,” “Afterward,” “The Lady's Maid's Bell,” “Kerfol,” “The Triumph of the Night,” “Miss Mary Pask,” “Bewitched,” “Mr. Jones,” “Pomegranate Seed,” and “A Bottle of Perrier.”

The Buccaneers. New York: Appleton-Century, 1938. Incomplete at her death and published posthumously, the story is set in the 1870s and centers around the marital fortunes of five young women. It opens in Saratoga Springs, New York, where the three women meet during the summer season. Their ambitious mothers are keen to launch them in high society and to have them make advantageous marriages, but they have not had any success either in Newport or in New York. One of the mothers, Mrs. St. George, hires a governess, Laura Testvalley, for Nan, her sixteen-year-old daughter who is not yet “out” in the marriage market. Miss Testvalley advises her employer to take her two daughters to Europe for the London season. Conchita Closson and Lizzie and Mable Elmsworth persuade their parents to let them go to London too. Virginia St. George is the first to get married, to Lord Seadown, Conchita marries Lord Richard Marable, and Lizzie marries Hector Robinson, MP. Nan has the greatest “success” in attracting the attention of Duke of Tintagel. The couple are, however, incompatible and their marriage a disaster. Nan falls in love with a Guards officer, Guy Thwarte, whose father is courting Laura Testvalley. Laura helps Nan to run away from her husband but, in doing so, antagonizes Guy's father and loses her opportunity to secure her future with an advantageous marriage.

The Collected Short Stories of Edith Wharton, 2 volumes. New York: Scribners, 1968. Edited by R. W. B. Lewis.

The Letters of Edith Wharton. New York: Scribners, 1988. Edited by R. W. B. Lewis and Nancy Lewis.

The Cruise of the Vanadis. Amiens: Sterne (Presses de L'UFR Clerc Université Picardie, 1992. Wharton's diary of her cruise on James Van Alen's yacht in the Aegean in 1888.

The Buccaneers and Fast and Loose. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993. Wharton's first novel, Fast and Loose, which she had written as a child was published for the first time with her last, unfinished novel.

The Buccaneers. New York: Viking, 1993. Marion Mainwaring completes the ending, using notes from Wharton.

CRITICAL RECEPTION

The Early Years, 1899-1905: Wharton's initial appearance on the literary scene was met with considerable acclaim and reviewers recognized considerable potential in her work. She was particularly praised for her command of language and polished and graceful style as well as for insightful analysis into the human condition. One theme which emerged early on in the critical reviews was the comparison between her work and that of Henry James. Some critics saw her writing as too derivative and thought she should shake of the mantle of the master. On the other hand, there were those who had come to despair of James's later works and thought Wharton's stories compared much more favorably.

THE YEARS OF POPULAR AND CRITICAL ACCLAIM, 1905-24:

The House of Mirth firmly established Wharton's popularity in these years and her position as one of the foremost American authors of the period. Published in October 1905, it sold 30,000 copies in the first two weeks, 80,000 copies had been produced within a month, climbing to 140,000 by the end of 1905. It was top of the best-seller list for several months and Scribners were delighted with the sales. In these years, critics commented frequently about her gender as a writer as well as her social class, two factors that were seen as limiting. Comments were made about her weak, ineffectual male characters and her unpleasant female characters. On the whole, reviewers were more positive about her portrayal of New York high society than about her stories set in New England or those featuring characters from the lower social classes. There were frequent complaints about the unhappy endings that pervaded her fiction and the dreary nature of the subject matter. By the war years, when she had expatriated herself to France permanently, American critics were defensive about her preference for France and French culture and her criticism of the United States. But, unlike Henry James, she never gave up her American citizenship.

THE LATER YEARS, 1925-37:

Wharton's popularity continued well into the 1920s, reaching a peak in 1928 when The Children was selected for the Book-of-the-Month Club. However, now in her sixties, she was beginning to feel that she was out-of-touch with America and the new generation of writers, and reviewers commented on this too. By the depression years, her novels were out of tune with the predominant trend in literary production in the United States. As Blake Nevius wrote in 1953—in one of the earliest critical studies of Wharton's oeuvres—“It is difficult to think of a twentieth-century American novelist … whose reputation has suffered more from the change of interests and narrowing of emphasis in the literature of the 'thirties than has Edith Wharton's.”¹

POSTHUMOUS CRITICAL RECEPTION:

Wharton's star faded after her death. She was not much anthologized and was frequently omitted from lists of the most prominent writers of American literature in spite of the fame and renown that she had acquired during her lifetime. Until 1975, little biographical information was available about her apart from her own memoirs and Percy Lubbock's none too flattering Portrait of Edith Wharton (1947). Blake Nevius made the first effort to revive critical attention in Wharton. In his opinion there were three particular reasons for renewing interest in her work. First, that, unlike any other novelist of her generation, she illuminated a major aspect of U. S. social history by dealing with the conflict of ideals of the old mercantile and new industrial elites. Second, she is the most successful American novelist of manners after Henry James. Third, her development of two great themes, (1) disastrous unions between mismatched characters, one large and generous, the other mean, and (2) the definition of the nature and limits of individual responsibility.²

When R. W. B. Lewis came to write the first biography of Wharton after her papers were made available to scholars, he was firmly of the opinion that although there is an unevenness in the quality of her works, “they are among the handsomest achievements in our literature.” Lewis compares them to the oeuvre of the famous French nineteenth-century novelist, Honoré de Balzac, calling them Wharton's comédie humaine, with their satirical and ironical views of a sixty-year period of U. S. social history and of Americans in a transatlantic setting. Notably, he wrote, they provide:

testimony to the female experience under modern historical and social conditions, to the modes of entrapment, betrayal, and exclusion devised for women in the first decades of the American and European twentieth century.³

With the emergence, in the 1970s, of feminist literary criticism and critical analysis of the representation of gender in society, Wharton's work underwent considerable critical re-evaluation. Several of her novels and novellas, out of print for many years, were re-issued by Virago, a feminist publishing company. Elizabeth Ammons' study in 1980 was the first book-length treatment of Wharton's statements about the plight of white, upper- and middle-class women in U. S. society. This was followed, in 1982, by Carol Wershoven's The Female Intruder in the Novels of Edith Wharton. There has been a steady increase in the number of scholarly articles and doctoral dissertations on Wharton during the past two decades, testifying both to the richness and literary significance of Wharton's texts.

ADAPTATIONS OF WHARTON'S WORK

THEATER:

Since 1978 Shakespeare & Company have staged a large number of Wharton's short stories, novels and novellas at Wharton's home, The Mount, in Lenox, Mass. These include: “Afterward,” “Autres Temps,” “Confession,” Ethan Frome, “Expiation,” The House of Mirth, “Kerfol,” “The Legend,” “The Mission of Jane,” The Old Maid, “The Other Two,” “Roman Fever,” and “Xingu.”

The House of Mirth: Dramatized by Wharton with Clyde Fitch, who directed the production at the Detroit Opera House, opening on September 14 1906. The production then moved to the Savoy Theatre, New York, opening in October and starring Fay Davis as Lily Bart and Charles Bryant as Lawrence Selden. It did not receive favorable reviews. There have been two major revivals, one at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Have, Conn., in 1976, and other at The Mint Theater Co., in New York City in 1988. A dramatization by Louis Auchincloss was staged at the HB Playwrights Foundation Theatre, New York City, in November 1977, and directed by Herbert Berghof.

The Age of Innocence: Dramatized by Margaret Ayer Barnes and directed by Guthrie McClintic. It opened at the Empire Theater, New York City, on 27 November 1928, running for 207 performances, with Katharine Cornell as Ellen Olenska. The production toured nine cities.

The Old Maid: Dramatized by Zoë Akins and directed by Guthrie McClintic. It opened at the Empire Theater, New York City, on 7 January 1935, running for 305 performances. Judith Anderson played Delia Lovell and Helen Menken took the part of Charlotte Lovell. The dramatization was awarded a Pulitzer Prize causing some controversy among New York critics who responded by setting up the New York Drama Critics Circle which offered its own awards.

Ethan Frome: Dramatized by Owen Davis and Donald Davis and directed by Guthrie McClintic. It first ran in Philadelphia, opening in January 1936, before going on to Broadway's National Theater when it had a runoff 120 performances. Raymond Massey was in the lead role as Ethan Frome, with Ruth Gordon playing Mattie Silver and Pauline Lord as Zenobia Frome. The Long Wharf Theater in New Haven, Conn., revived the play.

The Bunner Sisters: Adapted for the stage by DeWitt Bodeen at the Pasadena Community Playhouse in California in 1948.

The Custom of the Country: Dramatized by Jane Stanton Hitchcock at The Mount, Lenox, Mass. in 1984. It had a short run at the Promenade Theater, New York City.

Old New York: Dramatized and directed by Donald T. Sanders and produced at the Joseph Papp New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theatre.

FILM:

Initially, Wharton grossly underestimated the adaptability of her novels for the screen—that is, before the development of sound. She wrote to her sister-in-law, Minnie Jones, in 1920 that she did not take seriously flattery that she had received about her “capacity as a purveyor of cinema fiction” and that she did not expect any of her future works to bring her a fortune as film adaptations.⁴

The House of Mirth (Metro, 1918; 6 reels, silent): Directed by Albert Capellani and starring Katharine Harris Barrymore as Lily Bart.

The Glimpses of the Moon (Paramount, 1923; 7 reels, silent): Directed by Allan Dwan and starring Bebe Daniels, David Powell, Nita Naldi and Maurice Costello. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote the film dialogue.

The Age of Innocence (Warner Brothers, 1924; 7 reels, silent): Directed by Wesley Ruggles and starring Beverly Bayne, Elliot Dexter, Edith Roberts, Willard Louis, Fred Huntly, Gertrude Norman, Sigrid Holmquist and Stuart Holmes.

The Marriage Playground, based on The Children (Paramount, 1929; 70 mins.): Directed by Lothar Mendes and starring Mary Brian, Fredric March, Huntley Gordon, Lilyan Tashman, Kay Francis, William Austin, and Phillip de Lacey. Wharton received $25,000 for the film rights, more than for any other of her novels.

The Age of Innocence (RKO Radio, 1934; 80-90 mins.): Directed by Philip Moeller and starring Irene Dunne, John Boles, Julie Haydon, Lionel Atwill, Laura Hope Crews, Helen Westley, Herbert Yost, Theresa Maxwell-Conover, Edith Van Cleve, and Leonard Carey.

Strange Wives based on Wharton's short story, “Bread Upon the Waters” (Universal, 1935; 8 reels): Directed by Richard Thorpe and starring Roger Pryor, June Clayworth, Esther Ralston, Hugh O'Connell, Ralph Forbes, Cesar Romero, Francis L. Sullivan, Valerie Hobson, Leslie Fenton, Ivan Lebedeff, Doris Lloyd, and Claude Gilllingwater.

The Old Maid (Warner Brothers, 1939; 95 mins.): Directed by Edmund Goulding and starring Bette Davis, Miriam Hopkins, George Brent, Donald Crisp, Jane Bryan, Louise Fazenda, James Stephenson, Jerome Cowan, and William Lundigan.

The Children. (Isolde Films, 1990; 115 mins.): Directed by Tony Palmer and starring Ben Kingsley, Kim Novak, Siri Neal, Geraldine Chaplin, Joe Don Baker, Britt Ekland, Donald Sinden, Karen Black, Robert Stephens, Rupert Graves, Terence Rigby, Marie Helvin, Rosemary Leach, Mark Asquith, Anouk Fontaine, Ian Hawkes, Eileen Hawkes, Hermione Eyre, and Edward Michie.

Ethan Frome (American Playhouse Theatrical Films & Miramax Films, 1993; 99 mins.): Directed by John Madden and starring Liam Neeson, Patricia Arquette, Joan Allen, Tate Donovan, Katherine Houghton, Stephen Mendillo, Jay Goerde, George Woodward, Debbon Ayer, and Bob Campbell.

The Age of Innocence (Columbia Pictures, 1993; 138 mins.): Directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Michele Pfeiffer, Daniel Day-Lewis, Winona Ryder, Geraldine Chaplin, Michael Gough Richard E. Grant, Mary Beth Hurt, Robert Sean Leonard, Norman Lloyd, Miriam Margolyes, Alec McCowen, Sian Phillips, Jonathan Pryce, Alexis Smith, Stuart Wilson, and Joanne Woodward (as the narrator).

The House of Mirth (Sony Pictures Classics, 2000; 140 mins.): Adapted and Directed by Terrence Davies and starring Gillian Anderson, Eric Stolz, Dan Aykroyd, and Elizabeth McGovern.

TELEVISION:

Ethan Frome (1960): Directed by Alex Segal and produced by David Susskind. Cast included: Sterling Hayden, Julie Harris, and Clarice Blackburn.

The House of Mirth (1981): Directed by Adrian Hall and produced by Daniel A. Bohr and Dorothy Cullman. Cast included: Geraldine Chaplin, William Atherton, Richard Kneeland, Marguerite Lenert, George Martin, Barbara Orson, Richard Jenkins, Lois Smith, Elizabeth Franz, and Margo Skinner.

Summer (1981): Directed by Dezsoo Magyar and produced by Daniel A. Bohr and Dorothy Cullman. Cast included: Diane Lane, Michael Ontkean, John Cullum, Jackie Brookes, Ray Poole, Edith Meiser, Kevin Martin, Kevin O'Connor and Kathryn Dowling.

The Lady's Maid's Bell (1983): Directed by John Glenister and produced by June Wyndham Davies for Granada Television in association with WGBH-Boston. Cast included: Joanna David, June Brown, Norma West, Ian Collier, Charlotte Mitchell, Roger Llewellyn, Harry Littlewood, Diane Whiteley, Clive Duncan, Malcolm Raeburn, Bernard Atha, and Alick Hayes.

Afterward (1983): Directed by Simon Langton and produced by June Wyndham Davies for Granada Television in association with WGBH-Boston. Cast included: Kate Harper, Michael J. Shannon, Penelope Lee, John Grillo, Meg Ritchie, Rolf Saxon, William Abney, Merelinda Kendall, Arthur Whybrow, and Eric Francis.

Bewitched (1983): Directed by John Gorrie and produced by June Wyndham Davies for Granada Television in association with WGBH-Boston. Cast included: Eileen Atkins, Alfred Burke, Ray Smith, Gareth Thomas, Alfred Lynch, Mary Healey, Martyn Hesford, and MaryJo Randle.

The Buccaneers (1995): Directed and produced by Philip Saville for BBC Productions. Cast included: Cheri Lunghi, Carla Gugino, Mira Sorvino, Alison Elliott, Rya Kihlstedt, Ronan Vibert, Mark Tandy, James Frain, Dinsdale Landen, Rosemary Leach, Greg Wise, Michael Kitchen, Sophie Dix, Sienna Guillory, Emily Hamilton, Connie Booth, Jenny Agutter, Gwen Humble, Peter Michael Goetz, Elizabeth Ashley, James Rebhorn, and Sheila Hancock.

Notes

1. Blake Nevius, Edith Wharton: A Study of Her Fiction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1953), p. 1.

2. Ibid., pp. 8-10.

3. R. W. B. Lewis, Edith Wharton, A Biography (London: Constable, 1975), p. xiii.

4. Edith Wharton to Minnie Cadwalader Jones, 5 January 1920, Paris. Edith Wharton Papers, Beineke Library, Yale University.