Edith Wharton and Genre

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In Rattray's hands, Edith Wharton is re-presented as a writer mastering a widerange of genres beyond the celebrated fiction. Wharton's achievements inpoetry, drama, architecture and design, criticism, memoir, and travel writingemerge as sites for her most confident, radical experiments. This game-changingbook will lay to rest the image of the grand dame, showing Wharton to defycategorization and to be as "large" and full of "multitudes" as the Whitman sheso admired.'- Emily J. Orlando, Professor of English at Fairfield University, USA, and author of Edith Wharton and the Visual Arts (2007)Based on extensive new archival research, Edith Wharton and Genre: BeyondFiction offers the first study of Wharton's full engagement with original writing ingenres outside those with which she has been most closely identified. So muchmore than an acclaimed novelist and short story writer, Wharton is reconsideredin this book as a controversial playwright, a gifted poet, a trailblazing travelwriter, an innovative and subversive critic, a hugely influential design writer, andan author who overturned the conventions of autobiographical form. Herversatility across genres did not represent brief sidesteps, temporary diversionsfrom what has long been read as her primary role as novelist. Each was pursuedfully and whole-heartedly, speaking to Wharton's very sense of herself as anartist and her connected vision of artistry and art. The stories of these other EdithWhartons, born through her extraordinary dexterity across a wide range ofgenres, and their impact on our understanding of her career, are the focus of thisnew study, revealing a bolder, more diverse, subversive and radical writer thanhas long been supposed.