We've moved!

The Edith Wharton Society now has a site that allows posting to the first page, so Edith Wharton in the News and any News and Notes will now be at our new site,

http://www.edithwhartonsociety.org

Since it's a Wordpress site, you can sign up for email updates or follow the site, if you like. The old content will remain at this site.

Please change your bookmarks to this new site, and thanks.

Edith Wharton Society News

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AWARD WINNERS

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Congratulations to the Edith Wharton Essay Prize winners:

Both essays will be published in the _EWR_, vol 29.2:

First prize: Krystyna Michael (PhD candidate, CUNY-Grad Center)“A Break in the Continuity:” Chaos, Control and Wharton’s Commitment to Form:

Second prize: Katelyn Durkin (PhD candidate, UVa):The (Re)Production Craze: Taylorism and Regress in Edith Wharton’s Twilight Sleep

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QUERIES

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The following queries will be posted to the Wharton Society site. If you have any information, please reply to the list or to whartonqueries@gmail.com

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Hello:

I'm an author specializing in the history of espionage. I'm currently working on a project that has somehow taken me a bit far afield. I'm trying to track down the story that Edith Wharton intervened for Maj. Ralph Van Deman in his efforts to establish a military intelligence division during World War I. 

Denman's memoirs mention a "lady authoress" who traveled in the same social circles as the Secretary of War, Baker, but offer no other details. 

I was hoping that perhaps she might have made mention of Maj. Deman or Baker in her diaries.  The date would have been around 1917, just prior to America's entrance into WWI. 

Needless to say, any assistance you might be able to provide would be greatly appreciated. 

Best Regards,

Henry R. Schlesinger

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Dear EW Community:

I thank you in advance for your help,

Meg

{It is fine to list my information.}

Margaret Toth, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of English margaret.toth@manhattan.edu www.manhattan.edu

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MINUTES

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Minutes for the ALA 2013 Business Meeting: http://www.edithwhartonsociety.org/alamin5-24-13.htm

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EDITH WHARTON REVIEW

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New Volume of The Edith Wharton Review 

http://www.edithwhartonsociety.org/ewr.htm

Volume 29.1, Spring 2013

Teaching Cluster--Guest Editor, Gary Totten

Singley, Carol. "Change at Stake: Teaching Edith Wharton's Late Fiction." Edith Wharton Review 29.1 (Spring 2013): 1-7.

Goldsmith, Meredith. "Twilight Sleep and The Children: Approaching Wharton's Late Novesl in the Undergraduate Classroom." Edith Wharton Review 29.1 (Spring 2013): 7-11.

Kornasky, Linda. "Edith Wharton's The Glimpses of the Moon meets Geoffrey Miller's Spent." Edith Wharton Review 29.1 (Spring 2013): 11-20.

Wentzel, Rocki. "Classical Reception in Edith Wharton's Late Fiction." Edith Wharton Review 29.1 (Spring 2013): 20-32.

Saunders, Judith. "Unwritten Masterpieces." Edith Wharton Review 29.1 (Spring 2013): 32.

Coit, Emily. Rev. of Edith Wharton in Context, ed. Laura Rattray. Edith Wharton Review 29.1 (Spring 2013): 33-34.

Dawson, Melanie. "Edith Wharton Collection Research Report." Edith Wharton Review 29.1 (Spring 2013): 34-35.

Wierzbicki, Kaye. "Edith Wharton Society Mount Research Award." Edith Wharton Review 29.1 (Spring 2013): 33-37.

Goldman-Price, Irene. "From the Archives: Two Letters from Harry Jones to Anna Foster about Wharton's Near-Fatal Illness." Edith Wharton Review 29.1 (Spring 2013): 37-39.

Edith Wharton Symposium Registration Open

Please note that online registration is now open for the Edith Wharton symposium taking place in Liverpool from 22 -23 August 2013. Everyone welcome! 

To register, please go to the site www.hope.ac.uk/custom and click the booking tab.

Dr. Laura Rattray

Wharton Panels at ALA 2013

Edith Wharton Panels at ALA 2013

Friday May 24, 2013 8:10 – 9:30 am

Session 7-A Edith Wharton and Cosmopolitanism (Essex North East 3rd Floor)

Organized by the Edith Wharton Society

Chair: Emily Orlando, Fairfield University

1. “Edith Wharton’s Old New York: The Autobiography of an Expatriate,” Hildegard Hoeller, CUNY-CSI and the Graduate Center

2. “‘she was learning how to make hats’: Negotiating New York City in The House of Mirth and Free Food for Millionaires,” Johanna X. K. Garvey, Fairfield University

3. “‘I want a girl who doesn’t know what a Duke is’: The Buccaneers and Models of Cosmopolitan Thought,” Melanie Dawson, College of William and Mary

4. “Contexts Engendering Texts: Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence and Francesca Segal’s The Innocents,” Ferdâ Asya, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania

Friday May 24, 2013 9:40 – 11:00 am

Session 8-F Undine at 100: A Centennial Reappraisal of The Custom of the Country (Defender 7thFloor)

Organized by the Edith Wharton Society

Chair: Cecilia Macheski, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY

1. “A Novel for All Seasons,” Susan Goodman, University of Delaware

2. “Gate-Crasher par excellence: Undine and the 'Aborigines' in The Custom of the Country,” Maureen E. Montgomery, University of Canterbury, New Zealand

3. “Finding Undine: Narrative Sources and Strategies for The Custom of the Country,” Laura Rattray, University of Glasgow

4. “Technologies of Information: Gossip, Self-Revelation, and Social Media in Wharton'sThe Custom of the Country,” Gary Totten, North Dakota State University



Session 10-P Business Meeting: Edith Wharton Society (Baltic 7th Floor)

Wharton Panels at ALA 2013

Edith Wharton Panels at ALA 2013

Friday May 24, 2013 8:10 – 9:30 am

Session 7-A Edith Wharton and Cosmopolitanism (Essex North East 3rd Floor)

Organized by the Edith Wharton Society

Chair: Emily Orlando, Fairfield University

1. “Edith Wharton’s Old New York: The Autobiography of an Expatriate,” Hildegard Hoeller, CUNY-CSI and the Graduate Center

2. “‘she was learning how to make hats’: Negotiating New York City in The House of Mirth and Free Food for Millionaires,” Johanna X. K. Garvey, Fairfield University

3. “‘I want a girl who doesn’t know what a Duke is’: The Buccaneers and Models of Cosmopolitan Thought,” Melanie Dawson, College of William and Mary

4. “Contexts Engendering Texts: Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence and Francesca Segal’s The Innocents,” Ferdâ Asya, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania

Friday May 24, 2013 9:40 – 11:00 am

Session 8-F Undine at 100: A Centennial Reappraisal of The Custom of the Country (Defender 7thFloor)

Organized by the Edith Wharton Society

Chair: Cecilia Macheski, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY

1. “A Novel for All Seasons,” Susan Goodman, University of Delaware

2. “Gate-Crasher par excellence: Undine and the 'Aborigines' in The Custom of the Country,” Maureen E. Montgomery, University of Canterbury, New Zealand

3. “Finding Undine: Narrative Sources and Strategies for The Custom of the Country,” Laura Rattray, University of Glasgow

4. “Technologies of Information: Gossip, Self-Revelation, and Social Media in Wharton'sThe Custom of the Country,” Gary Totten, North Dakota State University



Session 10-P Business Meeting: Edith Wharton Society (Baltic 7th Floor)

CFP: Edith Wharton and The Custom of the Country: Centennial Reappraisals

Edith Wharton and The Custom of the Country: Centennial Reappraisals

Symposium: 22 and 23 August 2013, Liverpool Hope University, UK

Symposium Directors: William Blazek (Liverpool Hope University) and Laura Rattray (University of Glasgow)

Call for Papers:

2013 marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of Edith Wharton’s much-read and much-analyzed novel The Custom of the Country. Described as the writer’s "greatest book" by Hermione Lee in her 2007 biography, and listed by Wharton herself at the end of a long and prolific career as one of her own favourite works, The Custom of the Country arguably remains the author's most complex and controversial novel.

To mark its centenary year, the symposium directors warmly invite papers on any topic pertaining to this landmark text. Themes might include: re-readings of the novel in the light of modern economic crises, serialisation, marketing and material culture, narrative strategies, modernist aesthetics, the challenges and rewards of teaching the novel, and reappraisals of Wharton’s most controversial female protagonist, Undine Spragg. Alternatively, discussions might be framed within the contexts of leisure-class marriage and divorce, masculinity, Europe, travel, or the visual arts. We also welcome broader comparative approaches, viewing The Custom of the Country in relation to other novels of the period, to other work by Wharton in any genre, or exploring the novel’s influence on contemporary writers and popular culture.

Co-sponsored by the Edith Wharton Society, the symposium will be held on the Hope Park campus of Liverpool Hope University, located within five miles of the Liverpool city centre. Moderately priced, ensuite campus accommodation will be available to delegates for the duration of the symposium. Day rates are also available. Keynote speakers for this event will be confirmed shortly. Further information and updates can be found on the symposium website: www.hope.ac.uk/custom

Please send 250-word abstracts for 20-minute papers (indicating any equipment/technical requirements), and a brief biographical note by the deadline of 15 April 2013 to the directors via e-mail: custom@hope.ac.uk

Sponsors: Liverpool Hope University and the Edith Wharton Society

Wharton Research Award and Mount Research Award Winners

Beinecke Wharton Collection Award: Melanie Dawson, College of William and Mary, “Ageist Modernity: Generational Obsessions in the Work of Edith Wharton and Her Contemporaries”
Dawson will examine Wharton’s letters and drafts of her later fiction for clues to the ways in which her sense of age, beauty, and women’s cultural position were bound up in one another and the ways in which her understanding of these issues may have changed over time and across manuscript revisions.

Mount Research Award: Kaye Wierzbicki, Harvard University, “‘Thinking Away the Flowers’: Edith Wharton and a Return to Form.”

In addition to the Mount’s physical gardens,Wierzbicki will examine Wharton’s annotations and markings in scientific and evolutionary texts and the extensive collection of horticultural and landscape design texts in her library, spanning subjects from arboriculture to irises and from Italian Renaissance gardens to Japanese rock gardens. Wierzbicki will consider Wharton’s thinking about the relationship between text and garden and between garden and nation.

The Edith Wharton Essay Prize

The deadline has been extended to May 30, 2012 for the Edith Wharton Essay Prize. Please encourage your colleagues and grad students to submit an essay.


The Edith Wharton Essay Prize

Deadline: May 30, 2012

Instituted in the fall of 2005, the Edith Wharton Essay Prize is awarded annually for the best unpublished essay on Edith Wharton by a beginning scholar. Graduate students, independent scholars, and faculty members who have not held a tenure-track or full-time appointment for more than four years are eligible to submit their work. The winning essay will be published in The Edith Wharton Review, a peer-reviewed journal indexed in the MLA Bibliography , and the writer will receive an award of $250.

All entries will be considered for publication in The Edith Wharton Review as well as for the Edith Wharton Essay Prize. Submissions should be 15-25 pages in length and should follow the 7th edition MLA style, using endnotes, not footnotes. Applicants should not identify themselves on the manuscript but should provide a separate cover page that includes their names, academic status, e-mail address, postal addresses, and the notation “The Edith Wharton Essay Prize.”

To submit an essay for the prize, send three copies to The Edith Wharton Review:

Prof. Carole M. Shaffer-Koros, Editor
Kean University, English Department
CAS 3rd floor
1000 Morris Avenue
Union, NJ 07083