I'm glad you mentioned Wharton's The Children. Her later novels like that one, Glimpses of the Moon, and The Mother's Recompense were sorely neglected back before I published Edith Wharton's Prisoners of Shame.
Oh Lev! I feel like I'm WRITING this to converse with you! I'm NOT KIDDING. I have come to a place in my life where I only want to read James, and I wish I had read Prisoners of Shame back then.
I always want to compare Wharton with James, since they were friends, and The Children came out in 1928, 20 years prior to Maisie... she was maybe always a leader
I love reading your substack. And have always enjoyed Wharton/James anecdotes, like the one where they visited the house of George Sand and wandered around outside.
Didn't James publish Maisie in the 1890s as he was transitioning to his late phase?
BTW, The Edith Wharton Review is going to publish my memoir of living with Wharton from the time of RWB Lewis' biography.
Excellent!, re: the memoir! Please let me know when it's out.
I am not as knowledgeable as you, but I assume the late phase comes a little after Guy Domville doesn't...succeed...(1895 by my powers of googling) and he starts up with all the big stuff (but also "A Turn of the Screw", a kind of big stuff).
yes--Wharton's The Children in 1928, and Maisie in 1897--did I screw it up? yes, Maisie (I have secretly read it before and I know what happens because I used to love relentless irony) is an outlier--like he wanted to exorcise all the last bits of irony by making a puff pastry of irony that's super thick and becomes... a puff pastry of sublime.
I'm glad you mentioned Wharton's The Children. Her later novels like that one, Glimpses of the Moon, and The Mother's Recompense were sorely neglected back before I published Edith Wharton's Prisoners of Shame.
Oh Lev! I feel like I'm WRITING this to converse with you! I'm NOT KIDDING. I have come to a place in my life where I only want to read James, and I wish I had read Prisoners of Shame back then.
I always want to compare Wharton with James, since they were friends, and The Children came out in 1928, 20 years prior to Maisie... she was maybe always a leader
I love reading your substack. And have always enjoyed Wharton/James anecdotes, like the one where they visited the house of George Sand and wandered around outside.
Didn't James publish Maisie in the 1890s as he was transitioning to his late phase?
BTW, The Edith Wharton Review is going to publish my memoir of living with Wharton from the time of RWB Lewis' biography.
Excellent!, re: the memoir! Please let me know when it's out.
I am not as knowledgeable as you, but I assume the late phase comes a little after Guy Domville doesn't...succeed...(1895 by my powers of googling) and he starts up with all the big stuff (but also "A Turn of the Screw", a kind of big stuff).
Will do! It was a blast to write.
You're right technically about the late phase, though to me, Maisie was so introverted a book, it felt like a kind of preview.
I think you have a typo in re/the date of Maisie? It came well before The Children as you know.
yes--Wharton's The Children in 1928, and Maisie in 1897--did I screw it up? yes, Maisie (I have secretly read it before and I know what happens because I used to love relentless irony) is an outlier--like he wanted to exorcise all the last bits of irony by making a puff pastry of irony that's super thick and becomes... a puff pastry of sublime.