It is only in these moments of satire that Mrs. Wharton reveals much about her disposition: her impatience of stupidity and affectation and muddy confusion of mind and purpose; her dislike of dinginess; her toleration of arrogance when it is high-bred. Such qualities do not help her, for all her spare, clean movement, to achieve the march or rush of narrative; such qualities, for all her satiric pungency, do not bring her into sympathy with the st.u.r.dy or burly or homely, or with the broader aspects of comedy.... So great is her self-possession that she holds criticism at arm"s length, somewhat as her chosen circles hold the barbarians. If she had a little less of this pride of dignity she might perhaps avoid her tendency to a.s.sign to decorum a larger power than it actually exercises, even in the societies about which she writes.... The illusion of reality in her work, however, almost never fails her, so alertly is her mind on the lookout to avoid vulgar or shoddy romantic elements.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Greater Inclination. 1899.
The Touchstone. 1900.
Crucial Instances. 1901.
The Valley of Decision. 1902.
Sanctuary. 1903.
The Descent of Man, and Other Stories. 1904.
Italian Villas and Their Gardens. 1904.
Italian Backgrounds. 1905.
*The House of Mirth. 1905.
*Madame de Treymes. 1907.
The Fruit of the Tree. 1907.
The Hermit and the Wild Woman. 1908.
A Motor-flight Through France. 1908.
Artemis to Actaeon. 1909.
Tales of Men and Ghosts. 1910.
*Ethan Frome. 1911.
The Reef. 1912.
*The Custom of the Country. 1913.
Fighting France. 1915.
*Xingu and Other Stories. 1916.
Summer. 1917.
The Marne. 1918.
In Morocco. 1920.
French Ways and their Meaning. 1919.
*The Age of Innocence. 1920.
Glimpses of the Moon. 1922.
STUDIES AND REVIEWS
Bjorkman, E. Voices of Tomorrow. 1913.
Cooper.
Halsey. (Women.) Sedgwick, H.D. The New American Type. 1908.
Underwood.
Atlan. 98 ("06): 217.
Bookm. 33 ("11): 302 (portrait).
Critic, 37 ("00): 103 (portrait), 173.
Cur. Op. 58 ("15): 272.
Dial, 68 ("20): 80.
Harp. W. 49 ("05): 1750 (portrait).
Lit. Digest, 55 ("17): Aug. 4, p. 37 (portrait).
Lond. Times, Dec. 5, 1919: 710.
Nation, 85 ("07): 514; 97 ("13); 404; 112 ("21): 40. (Carl Van Doren.) New Repub. 2 ("15): 40; 3 ("15): 20; 10 ("17): 50.
New Statesman, 8 ("16): 234.
No. Am. 182 ("06): 840; 183 ("06): 125 (continuation of previous article.) Outlook, 71 ("02): 209, 211 (portrait); 81 ("05): 719; 90 ("08): 698 (portrait), 702.
Putnam"s, 3 ("08): 590 (portrait).
Quarterly R. 223 ("15): 182 (Percy Lubbock)=Liv. Age, 284 ("15): 604.
Spec. 95 ("05): 470.