Praise for The Bloomsbury Handbook to Edith Wharton edited by Emily J. Orlando:
“Beautifully introduced by editor Emily J. Orlando, The Bloomsbury Handbook to Edith Wharton is an impressive volume underlining Wharton’s extraordinary versatility and her remarkable ability to speak to our current moment.” –Laura Rattray, Reader in American Literature, University of Glasgow, UK
“Through invigorated theoretical frameworks that cross disciplines, Orlando’s contributors effectively draw attention to the wide range of complexities and complications that Wharton’s works reveal in both content and method. A multi-gifted Wharton shines brightly here.” –Rita Bode, Department of English Literature, Trent University, Canada
“A riveting introduction by Orlando outlines her vision to broaden the horizon of Edith Wharton studies and the ways in which the author’s writing might allow a contemporary reader to examine critically the complicated facets of contemporary culture. Orlando draws several comparisons between modern America and examples from Wharton’s books, convincingly connecting lines between Undine Spragg and influencer culture, Lily Bart and the #MeToo movement, and Wharton’s war work with refugees to recent immigration policies. Orlando successfully argues that Wharton, like Walt Whitman, ‘contain[s] multitudes,’ a statement that sets the tone for a collection of essays wherein contradiction is taken into consideration and the large scope of Wharton’s writing is given room to grow (2). The seventeen compelling essays that comprise TBHEW outline the importance of considering the multitudes of Wharton’s writing across genres: in her novels, her nonfiction prose writing, short fiction, poetry, plays, travel writing, and speaking engagements. They take into consideration Wharton’s personal life and politics and how these influenced the writing, as well as themes which may have previously gone un-, or at least under-, explored….TBHEW evokes promising lines of inquiry for Wharton scholarship with regard to how the author might step forward as an increasingly major player in the American literary canon. As Elaine Showalter notes in her afterword, ‘Edith Wharton in the Twenty-First Century,’ Wharton remains extremely relevant, not only as a lucrative asset, or as a reflection of our beleaguered times, but also as a beacon of hope. Wharton has moved ‘beyond’: beyond the boundaries of academic criticism and high literary culture, and toward becoming, as Showalter puts it, ‘truly iconic’ (287). This powerful and thoughtfully put together collection will launch her even further. In TBHEW Wharton emerges as a master of form, a reader, a writer, a modernist, and a lover (of both men and automobiles), and as Showalter claims: ‘If we want to understand contemporary ambition and art, gender, money, and marriage, Wharton is still the place to go’ (288). With exciting new scholarship that will interest those who have been reading Wharton for decades as well as students new to the author, TBHEW is the ultimate text for any reader interested in, as it were, ‘going’ to her”—H. J. E. Champion, Edith Wharton Review
