The Cambridge Companion to Edith Wharton offers a series of fresh examinations of Edith Wharton's fiction written both to meet the interest of the student or general reader who encounters this major American writer for the first time and to be valuable to advanced scholars looking for new insights into her creative achievement. The essays cover Wharton's most important novels as well as some of her shorter fiction, and utilise both traditional and innovative critical techniques, applying the perspectives of literary history, feminist theory, psychology or biography, sociology or anthropology, or social history. The Introduction supplies a valuable review of the history of Wharton criticism which shows how her writing has provoked varying responses from its first publication, and how current interests have emerged from earlier ones. A detailed chronology of Wharton's life and publications and a useful bibliography are also provided.

Diverse, vibrant, and challenging as the city itself, this Companion is the definitive guide to LA in literature.

New York holds a special place in America's national mythology as both the gateway to the USA and as a diverse, vibrant cultural center distinct from the rest of the nation. From the international atmosphere of the Dutch colony New Amsterdam, through the expansion of the city in the nineteenth century, to its unique appeal to artists and writers in the twentieth, New York has given its writers a unique perspective on American culture. This Companion explores the range of writing and performance in the city, celebrating Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Edith Wharton, Eugene O'Neill, and Allen Ginsberg among a host of authors who have contributed to the city's rich literary and cultural history. Illustrated and featuring a chronology and guide to further reading, this book is the ideal guide for students of American literature as well as for all who love New York and its writers.

This volume provides newly commissioned essays from leading scholars and critics on the social and cultural history of the novel in America. It explores the work of the most influential American novelists of the past 200 years, including Melville, Twain, James, Wharton, Cather, Faulkner, Ellison, Pynchon, and Morrison.

This Companion offers a thorough overview of the diversity of the American Gothic tradition from its origins to the present.