The Literature Network - The accomplishment of Edith Wharton.(author)

The accomplishment of Edith Wharton.(author)

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From: New Criterion
Date: 20010901
Author:Allen, Brooke

Edith Wharton counted her friendship with Henry James as the crown jewel of her career, but it just might have been a curse. During her lifetime she was labeled, inaccurately, as a disciple of James, an apprentice who inevitably fell short of the Master. Since her death she has continued to be compared with him, never to her advantage. Like her contemporary Georges Braque, she always comes in a poor second.

Wharton idolized James, to be sure, but she had a real sense of her own power as an author and of her artistic strengths, which were not his, and she chafed at the ...

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