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I enjoyed dipping into one of these short tales from time to time, finding unique characters, settings, and moralities of those in early 20th century America.
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Edith Wharton: Collected Stories 1911–1937
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A master of the American short story, in a two-volume collector's edition
Over the course of a long and astonishingly productive literary career that stretched from the early 1890s to just before World War II, Edith Wharton published nearly a dozen story collections, leaving a body of work as various as it is enduring. With this two-volume set, The Library of America presents the finest of Wharton's achievement in short fiction: 67 stories drawn from the entire span of her writing life, including the novella-length works The Touchstone, Sanctuary, and Bunner Sisters, eight shorter pieces never collected by Wharton, and many stories long out-of-print.
Her range of setting and subject matter is dazzling, and her mastery of style consistently sure. Here are all the aspects of Wharton's art: her satire, sometimes gentle, sometimes dark and despairing, of upper-class manners; her unblinking recognition of the power of social convention and the limits of passion; her merciless exposure of commercial motivations; her candid exploration of relations between the sexes.
The stories range with cosmopolitan ease from her native New York to the salons and summer hotels of Newport, Paris, and the Italian lakes. The depth of her response to World War I is registered in such works as "The Marne." Of particular interest are the remarkable stories, which treat occult and supernatural themes rarely encountered in her novels, such as the classic ghost stories "The Eyes" and "Pomegranate Seed."
Over the course of a long and astonishingly productive literary career that stretched from the early 1890s to just before World War II, Edith Wharton published nearly a dozen story collections, leaving a body of work as various as it is enduring. With this two-volume set, The Library of America presents the finest of Wharton's achievement in short fiction: 67 stories drawn from the entire span of her writing life, including the novella-length works The Touchstone, Sanctuary, and Bunner Sisters, eight shorter pieces never collected by Wharton, and many stories long out-of-print.
Her range of setting and subject matter is dazzling, and her mastery of style consistently sure. Here are all the aspects of Wharton's art: her satire, sometimes gentle, sometimes dark and despairing, of upper-class manners; her unblinking recognition of the power of social convention and the limits of passion; her merciless exposure of commercial motivations; her candid exploration of relations between the sexes.
The stories range with cosmopolitan ease from her native New York to the salons and summer hotels of Newport, Paris, and the Italian lakes. The depth of her response to World War I is registered in such works as "The Marne." Of particular interest are the remarkable stories, which treat occult and supernatural themes rarely encountered in her novels, such as the classic ghost stories "The Eyes" and "Pomegranate Seed."
848 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1,1937
This edition
- Format
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848 pages, Hardcover
- Published
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January 29, 2001 by Library of America
- ISBN
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9781883011949
- ASIN
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1883011949
- Language
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English
About the author
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Edith Wharton was an American writer and designer. Wharton drew upon her insider's knowledge of the upper-class New York "aristocracy" to portray, realistically, the lives and morals of the Gilded Age. In 1921, she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, for her novel, The Age of Innocence. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame, in 1996. Her other well-known works are The House of Mirth, the novella Ethan Frome, and several notable ghost stories.
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Rating(3.8 / 5.0, 13 votes)
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13 reviews All reviews
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I am enjoying reading one short story a night. My favorite so far is Xingu, truly the best, followed by The Marne.
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Fair to middling stories by the author who just can't quite manage to live up to the title of grande dame of American literature...
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Similar to the first volume, in that most of the stories range from decent to pretty good. There are more stories I'd rate as excellent this time, but they're offset by the unfortunate number of consistently awful ghost stories (sigh).
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The second volume in the Library of America's collection of Edith Wharton's short stories. This is a terrific set of her short stories written between 1911 and 1937, and at something over 800 pages it becomes very easy to simply become immersed in her storytelling craft and find that you've just passed three or four hours reading two or three truly excellent stories. In all honesty I can say that I really didn't encounter a bad one in the lot, and most of them are sparkling gems. As I've said, time and again, as much as I like Edith Wharton's novels, I really do love her short stories. They are, in many respects, timeless, insightful, some even a bit spooky, but all are ever so entertaining.
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A good mix of subjects with some stories that feel pretty progressive for their time. Some excellent stories, a few pretty dull, overall an enjoyable read.
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If you like "Roman Fever" you will love this collection of Edith Wharton's short stories. My favorites are: Xingu, The Long Run, The Triumph of Night, Atrophy, A Bottle of Perrier, After Holdbein, Pomegranate Seed, Confession, Roman Fever (of course), The Looking Glass, and All Souls'. They all end with an ironic twist. Although these are my favorites, I finished all but two and found that, by the end, I enjoyed every one of them.
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“Bunner Sisters” really stands out in this volume. But there are many more treasures to be found: for example “A Bottle of Perrier,” “Roman Fever,” and Wharton’s wonderful last story, “All Souls’.” These stories, along with those in Volume I, have comforted me through the pandemic—particularly on days of maximum gloom. I will miss them, going forward.
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