Linda Wagner-Martin (Essay Date 1996)

SOURCE: Wagner-Martin, Linda. "Prospects for the Study of Edith Wharton." Resources for American Literary Study 22, no. 1 (1996): 1-15.

In the following essay, Wagner-Martin surveys the critical reception of Wharton's writings since the mid-1970s, highlighting the diversity of approaches to her work and its implications for contemporary feminism.

To assert that serious criticism of the writing of Edith Wharton began with R. W. B. Lewis's 1975 Edith Wharton: A Biography would be an exaggeration. Yet for many readers and scholars of the 1980s and the 1990s, this single book—and its attendant publicity and awards—led to waves of reevaluation. In the long run, the attention meant that Wharton's work would be assessed in the context of the later twentieth century, rather than the earlier, a shift that has been healthy in a number of ways.

Following the Lewis biography by just two years...