Editor's Note

Abstract

With volume 32, issues 1–2 (2016) of the Edith Wharton Review, we are now proud to announce that we are part of the Pennsylvania State University Press journals collection. The Press boasts a substantial collection of single-author journals, including the Edgar Allan Poe Review, the F. Scott Fitzgerald Review, and the Mark Twain Annual; the Edith Wharton Review is Penn State UP's first single-author journal devoted to a woman writer. We are proud to be in such company, and we like to think that Wharton would be, too. Hearty thanks to the staff at the Press for their hard work and expertise; as readers will see, this volume sports a new cover and internal design that they have created. Readers will soon see transitions on the masthead: this volume marks our last issue with Emily Orlando (Fairfield University) as Book Review Editor; from volume 33 onward, Myrto Drizou (Valdosta State University) has graciously agreed to step into that capacity. As Editor of the journal, I am deeply grateful to Associate Editors Sharon Kim (Judson University) and Paul Ohler (Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Canada) for their help as the journal undergoes this transition.The summer of 2016 marked the Edith Wharton in Washington Conference (2–4 June 2016), codirected by Melanie Dawson (College of William & Mary) and Jennifer Haytock (State University of New York at Brockport). Held in the stunning Larz Anderson House in Dupont Circle, the conference placed Wharton in the context of her time, yet turned our attention toward new directions in Wharton scholarship. Conference abstracts, included in the journal for the first time, will allow readers to see some of the new directions work on Wharton is taking. A few highlights from the conference: keynote speaker Laura Rattray (University of Glasgow) called attention to the underappreciated genres in which Wharton worked; we were encouraged to resee Wharton not only as novelist, literary critic, and travel writer, but as poet, dramatist, and satirist. Wharton's protean versatility was matched by that of our special guest speaker, the prodigious playwright, screenwriter, translator, and director Christopher Hampton. Hampton's fascinating description of the process by which he adapted The Custom of the Country conveyed his sensitivity to the language, characterization, and imagery of Wharton's work. Hampton's talk offered a pivotal example of how adaptations function as interpretations—that is, how they illuminate the texts on which they are based. Simultaneously, it recalled how Wharton, a writer who was ambivalent (to say the least) about the possibilities of film, anticipated filmic techniques in her work.This volume of the journal illuminates some exciting developments in Wharton scholarship. Our cluster of articles on “Wharton and Sex,” based on papers at the Edith Wharton Society panel at MLA 2015, emphasizes how Wharton's fiction cultivated an unexpected frankness on questions of sexuality. General Editor Carol Singley (Rutgers University–Camden) describes the launch of The Complete Works of Edith Wharton, another important moment in Wharton studies. And in one of the many discoveries the archives have yet to afford, Anna Girling illuminates Wharton's relations with British publisher John Murray, showing that her conflicted relations with her publishers began early in her career.We also pay tribute to two Wharton scholars whom, sadly, we lost in 2015. Irene Goldman-Price offers a remembrance of her mentor, Millicent Bell, author of some of the earliest important scholarship on Wharton. And Suzanne Ferris gives a tribute to the critic and biographer Shari Benstock, author of the biography No Gifts from Chance (1994) and the germinal Women of the Left Bank (1986). We remain in the debt of these dedicated scholars, who helped pave the way for the work this volume of EWR contains.