English 333 - Seminar: A Major British or American Writer: Edith Wharton

Topics course: She was one of the hardest-working and highest paid professional writers of her generation; she was the product of a cushioned life at the upper end of New York Society. Edith Wharton (1862-1937) examined the privileged world into which she was born with an anthropological skepticism, a sardonic dissection of unforgiving social laws and mores, and yet also provided a backwards glance at a vanishing world. A reading of her major work in social and historical context: The House of Mirth, The Custom of the Country, Ethan Frome, Summer, The Age of Innocence and others.

Instructor Permission. Not open to first-years, sophomores