The House of Mirth: Authoritative Text Backgrounds and Contexts Criticism

This Norton Critical Edition of Edith Wharton's quintessential novel of the Gilded Age reprints the Scribner's magazine text of 1905, including the eight original illustrations.

The text has been introduced and thoroughly annotated by the editor for student readers. Backgrounds and Contexts includes selections from Edith Wharton's letters; articles from the period about etiquette, vocations for women, factory life, and Working Girls' Clubs; excerpts from the work of contemporary social thinkers including Thorstein Veblen, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Olive Schreiner; and a consideration of anti-Semitism at the turn of the century by historian John Higham. Also included are Charles Dana Gibson's precautionary piece "Marrying for Money" (including four Gibson drawings) and a tableau vivant of "The Dying Gladiator."

Criticism reprints six central contemporary reviews of the novel and six biographical and interpretive modern essays by Millicent Bell, Louis Auchincloss, Cynthia Griffin Wolff, R. W. B. Lewis, Elaine Showalter, and Elizabeth Ammons.

A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.

Including original illustrations

Edith Wharton was born Edith Jones on January 24, 1862, to a wealthy New York City family. Best known for her novels, Wharton’s illustrious literary career also included poetry, short stories, design books, and travelogues. She gained widespread recognition with the 1905 publication of The House of Mirth, a darkly comic portrait of New York aristocracy. In 1921, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel The Age of Innocence (1920), becoming the fi rst woman to claim it. Wharton moved to France in 1913, where she remained until her death. In addition to her many literary accolades, Wharton was awarded a French Legion of Honor medal for her humanitarian efforts during World War I. Edith Wharton died on August 11, 1937.

Elizabeth Ammons is the Harriet H. Fay Professor of Literature at Tufts University. She is the author of Conflicting Stories: American Women Writers at the Turn into the Twentieth Century, Edith Wharton’s Argument with America, and Brave New Worlds: How Literature Will Save the Planet. She is the editor or co-editor of many books, including Tricksterism in Turn-of-the-Century American Literature: A Multi-Cultural Perspective, Uncle Tom’s Cabin: A Casebook, American Color Writing, 1880-1920, Short Fiction by Black Women, 1900–1920, and the Norton Critical Edition of Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth.