Contemporary American Literature Part 65

Born at Delaware, Ohio, 1868. Educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Cincinnati, 1881-4.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Tenants. 1908.

*Nathan Burke. 1910.

The Legacy. 1911.

Van Cleve. 1913.

*The Rise of Jennie Cushing. 1914.

From Father to Son. 1919.

The House of Rimmon. 1922.

STUDIES AND REVIEWS

Overton.

Bookm. 27 ('08); 157 (portrait), 159; 31 ('10); 454 (portrait).

Cur. Op. 56 ('14): 137 (portrait).

Ind. 71 ('11): 532 (portrait).

New Repub. 2 ('15): 152. (Robert Herrick.) See also _Book Review Digest_, 1916-20.

+Henry Kitch.e.l.l Webster+--novelist.

Born at Evanston, Illinois, 1875. Ph.M., Hamilton College, 1897.

Instructor in rhetoric at Union College, 1897-8. Since then he has given his time entirely to writing novels.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Short Line War. 1899. (With Samuel Merwin.) Calumet "K". 1901. (With Samuel Merwin.) The Real Adventure. 1916.

The Painted Scene. 1916. (Short stories.) The Thoroughbred. 1917.

An American Family. 1918.

Mary Wollaston. 1920.

Real Life. 1921.

STUDIES AND REVIEWS

Bookm. 26 ('07): 4 (portrait only).

Everybody's, 37 ('17): Nov., p. 16 (portrait).

New Repub. 9 ('16): 133.

See also _Book Review Digest_, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1920.

+Winifred Welles+--poet.

Born at Norwich Town, Connecticut, 1893, and educated in the vicinity.

Her first volume, _The Hesitant Heart_, 1920, attracted attention for its lyric beauty.

STUDIES AND REVIEWS

Bookm. 51 ('20): 457.

New Repub. 23 ('20): 156.

See also _Book Review Digest_, 1920, 1921.

+Rita Wellman (Mrs. Edgar F. Leo)+--dramatist.

Born at Washington, D.C., 1890. Daughter of Walter Wellman, the airman and explorer. Educated in public schools and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Gentile Wife. 1919.

Wings of Desire. 1919. (Novel.) Funiculi Funicula. 1919. (Mayorga.)

+Edith (Newbold Jones) Wharton+--novelist, short-story writer.

Born in New York City, 1862. Educated at home but spent much time abroad when she was young. Mrs. Wharton is a society woman and a great lover of outdoors and of animals. Chevalier of the Legion of Honor of France.

SUGGESTIONS FOR READING

1. Mrs. Wharton's friendship with Henry James and the derivation of her methods from his suggest an interesting comparison of the work of these two writers. For this comparison, books treating of similar material should be chosen; for example, Mrs. Wharton's _The Custom of the Country_ or _Madame de Treymes_ with Mr. James's _Portrait of a Lady_ or _The Amba.s.sadors_. The result will show that Mrs. Wharton, having an essentially different type of mind, has worked out an interesting set of variations of Mr. James's method.

2. Mrs. Wharton's novels of American social life should be studied and judged separately from her Italian historical novel (_The Valley of Decision_) and from her New England stories, _Ethan Frome_ and _Summer_.

3. Two special phases of Mrs. Wharton's work which call for study are her management of supernatural effects in some of her short stories and her use of satire.

4. Her short stories offer a basis of comparison with those of Mrs.

Gerould (q.v.), another disciple of Mr. James.

5. Has Mrs. Wharton enough originality and enough distinction to hold a permanent high place as a novelist of American manners?

6. Use the following criticisms by Mr. Carl Van Doren as the basis of a critical judgment of your own. Decide whether he is in all respects right:

From the first Mrs. Wharton's power has lain in the ability to reproduce in fiction the circ.u.mstances of a compact community in a way that ill.u.s.trates the various oppressions which such communities put upon individual vagaries, whether viewed as sin, or ignorance, or folly, or merely as social impossibility.

She has always been singularly unpartisan, as if she recognized it as no duty of hers to do more for the herd or its members than to play over the spectacle of their clashes the long, cold light of her magnificent irony.