The New York Stories of Edith Wharton

It was in New York City that Edith Wharton’s literary and cultural sensibility was formed. The regular rows of somber brownstones, the inexorable codes of behavior, the solid layers of bullion on which the elegant social structure stood, all played a crucial part in the awakening of Edith Wharton’s mind. Though she moved in 1911 to France, where she spent the rest of her life, New York continued to figure for Wharton as a fixed point of reference - the North Star on the firmament of her imagination - even as, over the years, her views of the city changed. In her early work the city was stultifying and confining, rigid and materialistic. Later, it took on a certain nobility as a place supported and dignified by its own curious codes of honor. This original collection, the first to focus on Wharton’s relation to her native New York, shows the arc of Wharton’s own response to the city that shaped her view of the world. A partial list of the stories to be included: - The Rembrandt - The Dilettante - The Other Two - His Father’s Son - Roman Fever -The Long Run - Autres Tempsa - After Holbein