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The Collected Stories of Edith Wharton (two volumes)

Edited by Maureen Howard

“The Library of America’s collection is a splendid and satisfying publication, and a landmark in the history of Edith Wharton’s ever-shifting reputation.” — New York Review of Books

Overview
News & Views
Table of Contents

Overview

Story of the Week Edith Wharton, “Mrs. Manstey’s View”
April 4, 2022

Story of the Week Edith Wharton, “Miss Mary Pask”
October 29, 2021

Story of the Week Edith Wharton, “Kerfol”
October 26, 2020

Born into an upper-class New York family, Edith Wharton broke with convention and became a professional writer, earning an enduring place as the grande dame of American letters. This Library of America collection (along with its companion volume, Collected Stories: 1891–1910) presents the finest of Wharton’s achievement in short fiction, drawn from the more than eighty stories she published over the course of her career.

Opening with her first published story—the charming “Mrs. Manstey’s View,” about a disruption in the life of an elderly apartment-dweller—this first volume presents a writer beginning to explore the concerns of a lifetime. In “Souls Belated,” two lovers attempt to escape the consequences of their adultery—a subject to which Wharton returns throughout her career. In “The Mission of Jane” (about a remarkable adopted child) and “The Pelican” (about an itinerant lecturer), she discovers her gift for social and cultural satire. Perhaps the finest of her ghost stories, “The Eyes,” with its Jamesian sense of evil, is also included, along with two novella-length works, “The Touchstone” and “Sanctuary,” revealing the dazzling range of Wharton’s fictive imagination.

In the second volume, Wharton’s humor is abundantly evident in sly and subtle stories like “Xingu” (in which a ladies’ reading group is led to express its enthusiasm for an occult philosophy) and “Charm Incorporated” (about a mild-mannered Wall Street executive overwhelmed by his émigré wife’s needy but wonderful relatives). As always, Wharton’s is a provocative voice on the subject of sexuality and women’s roles. In “The Day of the Funeral,” “Joy in the House,” and “Atrophy,” love and desire confront the demands of polite society; in “Roman Fever,” a formal tour de force, two middle-aged women on holiday with their modern daughters revisit the fierce competitiveness of their own youth.

Of particular interest are Wharton’s stories of the uncanny and the supernatural, like the grisly “A Bottle of Perrier,” set in the North African desert, and the chilling “All Souls’,” written just before her death. An unacknowledged master of American horror fiction, Wharton’s lucid prose makes all the more powerful her exploration of the irrational forces underlying ordinary life.

The edition also includes a chronology of Wharton’s life, explanatory notes, and an essay on the texts.

Maureen Howard, editor of this volume, is the author of seven novels, including Grace Abounding, Expensive Habits, Natural History, and A Lover’s Almanac, and has taught at Columbia, Princeton, and Yale.
News & Views

Story of the Week Edith Wharton, “Mrs. Manstey’s View”
April 4, 2022

Story of the Week Edith Wharton, “Miss Mary Pask”
October 29, 2021

Story of the Week Edith Wharton, “Kerfol”
October 26, 2020

Story of the Week Edith Wharton, “Expiation”
November 22, 2019

Story of the Week Edith Wharton, “The Mission of Jane”
November 16, 2018
Table of Contents

Mrs. Manstey’s View
The Fulness of Life
The Lamp of Psyche
The Valley of Childish Things, and Other Emblems
The Muse’s Tragedy
A Journey
The Pelican
Souls Belated
The Twilight of the God
A Cup of Cold Water
The Touchstone
The Duchess at Prayer
The Angel at the Grave
The Recovery
The Rembrandt
The Moving Finger
Sanctuary
The Descent of Man
The Mission of Jane
The Other Two
The Reckoning
Expiation
The Lady’s Maid’s Bell
The House of the Dead Hand
The Introducers
The Hermit and the Wild Woman
The Last Asset
The Pretext
The Pot-Boiler
The Best Man
His Father’s Son
The Daunt Diana
The Debt
Full Circle
The Legend
The Eyes
Afterward
The Letters
Xingu
Coming Home
Autres Temps…
Kerfol
The Long Run
The Triumph of Night
Bunner Sisters
Writing a War Story
The Marne
Miss Mary Pask
The Young Gentlemen
Bewitched
The Seed of the Faith
Velvet Ear-Pads
Atrophy
A Bottle of Perrier
After Holbein
Mr. Jones
Her Son
The Day of the Funeral
A Glimpse
Joy in the House
Charm Incorporated
Pomegranate Seed
Confession
Roman Fever
The Looking-Glass
Duration
All Souls’

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1776 pages

LOA books are distributed worldwide by Penguin Random House

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