Wharton and Cather

Abstract

The impressive volume of Edith Wharton and Willa Cather scholarship this year signals that both novelists have achieved full acknowledgment as major literary figures of the American 20th century. Their work offers readers and scholars both scope and complexity enough to continue to raise fresh questions and to generate innovative readings. Continuing a recent trend, historical and archival projects dramatically expand the data and the contexts with which we approach the pair. Other work usefully imports concepts and methods from other disciplines, sociology, philosophy, cultural studies, and psychology among them, and most approaches are anchored in close analysis of Wharton’s and Cather’s texts. What follows are brief commentaries on those books, book chapters, and articles we consider most potentially useful for readers and scholars. The Wharton section of the chapter is contributed by Kim Vanderlaan and the Cather section by John Swift.