EDITOR’S NOTE

Recognizing the omissions and gaps that periodically but regularly occur in Wharton’s life writings is second in interest only to the ensuing and exciting explorations that these exclusions initiate. The lived experience is a tricky thing especially in the hands of the autobiographer whose motivations to omit may stem as much from strategy as indifference. Critical exploration, moreover, notices different things at different times suggesting an ongoing source for rich and intriguing material. In “The Final Termination: A New Chronology of Edith Wharton’s Engagement to Harry Stevens,” Ilene Kalish examines an event in Wharton’s life that, following Wharton’s own minimalist treatment of the incident, has received limited notice, and the critical recognition that it has received, as Kalish shows, tends to be misguided, reflecting both factual errors and misinterpretations. Drawing on Wharton’s life writings, archival letters, and newspaper accounts, especially from the 1880s’ society pages, Kalish provides a more detailed interpretation of Wharton’s engagement to Harry than has hitherto been attempted and in pursuing the implications of her findings suggests that the newspapers’ interest in the young couple gave Wharton her “first sustained treatment from the press.”Isabelle Parsons moves us forward chronologically providing insights into Wharton’s war-related creative output. Parsons’s discussion is based on an unpublished and incomplete short story, “The Men Who Saved the World,” that exists in two typescript copies at the Beinecke (accessible through the Beinecke’s digital collection). Through a critical contextualization and analysis, “Flowers, Champagne, and Amputation in ‘The Men Who Saved the World,’ a War Story by Edith Wharton” considers some of the ambivalences that seep through Wharton’s observations on war in the stories that take war events for their subject matter. Parsons pays particular attention to the way in which Wharton confronts the emotional trauma of war through a focus on physical amputation.The Review is pleased to focus as well in this issue on another aspect of Wharton’s multifaceted artistry in a special section on Edith Wharton, Playwright. This focus is occasioned by the first fully staged professional presentation of Wharton’s The Shadow of a Doubt, the only extant original full play by Wharton, discovered by Mary Chinery and Laura Rattray in 2017 at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin (see EWR vol. 33, no.1, for an account of the discovery and the text of the play). The highly regarded Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada, dedicated to the work of George Bernard Shaw and works written during or set in his lifetime, chose to include The Shadow of a Doubt in its 2023 season. The play opened in previews in mid-July and ran until mid-October. Mary Chinery traces the performance history of the play, which includes a surviving promptbook from the 1901 rehearsals for a planned production that did not materialize. “‘I believe my play is really “going through”’: Edith Wharton’s The Shadow of a Doubt: A Play in Three Acts in Performance” shows Wharton as an “engaged playwright” fully involved in seeing her work come alive on stage. Chinery sees the Shaw production director, Peter Hinton-Davis, offering some new interpretations of the play while staying true to Wharton’s “original intentions,” an observation confirmed in Julie Olin-Ammentorp’s theater review of the production. Taking into account the acting, staging, and many details of a live production, Olin-Ammentorp presents a viewer’s experience of the Shaw production that brings out Wharton’s strengths as a dramatist and positions the play in relation to her other works.Adding to the early history of the Edith Wharton Society that appeared in vol. 38, no. 1, Carole M. Shaffer-Koros brings the history of the Society up to date. “The Later History of the Edith Wharton Society: The Last Twenty-Three Years” presents a wealth of information on the continuous and ongoing activities of the Society.The Book Review section offers reviews of two works: Dara Downey reviews Emma Liggins’s discussions of an Anglo-American female literary tradition in the ghost story genre that moves through the Victorian period into modernism, focusing on architecture and domestic spaces. Downey points out how the chapter on Wharton’s ghost stories draws attention to a range of themes, such as the loss of privacy and the pressures of surveillance, that carry implications beyond the ghost story genre. The second review is of the much-anticipated Bloomsbury Handbook on Edith Wharton edited by Emily J. Orlando. H. J. E. Champion’s detailed overview effectively points to the volume’s comprehensive acknowledgment of the flourishing position of Wharton studies and the directions constantly opening up for further work.As at other times, the editors thank the anonymous peer-reviewers who generously give their time to further Wharton scholarship. A special thanks to Laura Rattray for her input on Wharton’s play. Thanks to those at PSUP involved in the production process. And we would also like to recognize an aspect of the Edith Wharton Society that is especially important for the journal: the Society awards. I have been thinking of this issue as a celebration: of the past and the present, of archives and live performances, and especially of the work that the EWS awards facilitate. As Isabelle Parsons acknowledges, her current article on Wharton’s war story originated when, as the recipient of the EWS Archival Research Award, she was researching another Wharton project at the Beinecke. The other award from which this issue has especially benefited is the Elsa Nettels Prize for a Beginning Scholar, an award that consistently attracts strong submissions. The prize this year was awarded to Ilene Kalish, whose winning article the EWR takes pleasure in publishing.

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