Edith Wharton

I first discovered Edith Wharton in December, 2017 when I came upon a mobi file of The Hermit and the Wild Woman, and Other Stories in my computer. I mentioned in that 2017 post that I had no recollection of when (or why) I had originally downloaded this ebook, but upon finding it my files, I was intrigued by the title and had sent the mobi to my Kindle.

After reading the first two short stories in the collection, I knew I'd want to read more by Wharton. Going back to my computer files, I saw that I had also downloaded two other novels by Wharton, The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth. As it turned out, these ebooks had sat unread in my pc since December, 2014. I sent these two to my Kindle as well and these three ebooks would be the last books I would read in 2017.

At the time of that December, 2017 post, I had not read the two novels nor had I finished the collection of her short stories, but as I said, I knew at the time I'd be reading more of Wharton's work, of whom, after reading those first two short stories, I compared to Elizabeth von Arnim. Anyone familiar with my "sorryalltheclevernamesaretaken" blog knows that Elizabeth von Arnim is one of my favorite writers and my comparing Wharton to her is high praise.

I did not, however go on to immediately binge read Wharton. At nearly the half-way point of The House of Mirth, Wharton's makes mention of a "bronze box with a miniature of Beatrice Cenci in the lid", and that led me to read more about Beatrice Cenci. I fell into a rabbit hole and forgot about Edith Wharton.

After reading four novels by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez during the first three weeks of this month, I wanted to go in a different direction. It was that decision that led me back to Wharton. I found two of her novels in my ebook collection - Twilight Sleep and The Children. Doing a little investigating, I learned that these two novels are considered part of Wharton's three "Jazz Age novels", the other being Glimpses of the Moon. I've read the three novels, and I'm not at all certain why the three should characterized this way.

Many of the characters in the three novels seem to wander aimlessly thru their life - like many in the post World War I era - I haven't read enough of Wharton's earlier novels to understand the reasoning of setting these three novel apart.

Being published two years after The Age of Innocence, for which she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in Literature, I can see Glimpses of the Moon just as easily being bundled with that novel as with the, so-called, "Jazz Age novels".

As I write this, I've begun reading Wharton's 1934 autobiography, A Backward Glance. There are quite a few novels, novellas, and short story collections by Wharton. I'll decide where to go after the autobiography.