Full Description
Ruthless and predatory, Edith Wharton's seductive young heroine Undine Spragg exploits a series of husbands from the American west to New York and France in her search for one with the ideal combination of social power, money, and material possessions—something "more luxurious, more exciting, more worthy of her!" Wharton's criticism of the leisure-class marriage market becomes a brilliant satire on the nature of desire, as the novel links marriage and divorce with selfish ambition and the culture of consumerism.
This Broadview edition provides a critical introduction and appendices that include Wharton's outline for and correspondence about The Custom of the Country, excerpts from Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué's novella Undine, and passages from works by Charles Darwin, Emma Goldman, Henry James, and Thorstein Veblen, among others.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Edith Wharton: A Brief Chronology
A Note on the Text
The Custom of the Country
Appendix A: Edith Wharton's Outline and Notes for The Custom of the Country
"Undine chronology"
"Final version"
Additional Notes
Appendix B: Edith Wharton's Correspondence about The Custom of the Country
To Morton Fullerton (15 May 1911)
To Bernard Berenson (16 May 1911)
To Bernard Berenson (6 August 1911)
To Charles Scribner (27 November 1911)
To Bernard Berenson (2 August 1913)
Appendix C: From Edith Wharton's Autobiography, A Backward Glance (1934)
Appendix D: Contemporary Reviews
Nation (15 May 1913)
New York Times Review of Books (19 October 1913)
Independent (13 November 1913)
Athenaeum (15 November 1913)
Bookman (December 1913)
Times Literary Supplement (2 April 1914)
Forum (November 1915)
Appendix E: Women and Marriage
From Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué, Undine (1811)
From Robert Grant, "The Art of Living, IX: The Case of Woman" (1895)
From Harold Frederic, The Damnation of Theron Ware or Illumination (1896)
Letter from Edith Wharton to John Hugh Smith (12 February 1909)
From Emma Goldman, "The Traffic in Women" (1910)
Appendix F: Competition and Consumerism
From Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (1859)
From Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)
From George Santayana, Character and Opinion in the United States (1920)
From Anita Loos, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925)
Appendix G: Aestheticism
From Walter Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873)
From Harold Frederic, The Damnation of Theron Ware or Illumination (1896)
From Henry James, The American Scene (1907)
Select Bibliography
