SOURCE: "Elinor Wylie and Léonie Adams: The Poetry of Feminine Sensibility," in A History of American Poetry, 1900-1940, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1946, pp. 282-99.

In the following excerpt from their critical collection, the authors compare Wylie's style to that of other female writers including Edith Wharton, suggesting that Wylie's final sonnets were influenced by Wharton's novel The House of Mirth.

Elinor Wylie, who was born September 7, 1885, and died in New York December 16, 1928, was not a precocious poet, and her publications, like the brilliant, public events of her career, were timed with art; she appeared before her readers as the finished artist, correct and polished. Her second book, Nets to Catch the Wind, 1921, was published when Mrs. Wylie was in her thirties and its appearance quickly established her reputation. (In 1912 her first book of poems, Incidental Numbers, a private edition of sixty copies with the author's name withheld...