Edith Wharton, Summer

Rita Bode (Trent University)

Ed. by Stephen E. Meats, Pittsburg State University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.3: American (US) Writing and Culture: The Early Twentieth-century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: J. Michael Duvall (College of Charleston), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Tony Papanikolas (San Jose State University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1917

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novella

Resources

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Writing to a friend on December 21, 1916, Edith Wharton made some telling remarks about the “shortish novel” on which she was working. Designating it “as the Hot Ethan”, she explains that it is set “in the neighbourhood of Windsor Mountain”, with “the time being summer which is also the title of the book”, and she adds, “I don’t know how on earth the thing got itself written in the scramble & scuffle of my present life: but it

did

” (

Letters

385). As in the earlier

Ethan Frome

of 1911, Wharton in

Summer

turns again to the New England countryside of her Massachusetts home, The Mount, to examine the strained and barren lives of both its small town inhabitants and the mountain people of the Berkshires’ backward locales. Wharton’s surprise at its completion is…

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3283 words

Citation: Bode, Rita. "Summer". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 25 August 2014 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=1797, accessed 25 November 2024.]

Edith Wharton, Summer

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