Anyone who peruses the Modern Language Association International Bibliography to understand the current state of scholarship on Edith Wharton encounters an array of innovative critical approaches to her work. Since 2017, the total number of journal articles, book chapters, and books published on Wharton's work exceeds thirty. A few examples must suffice to suggest the range of approaches. Emily Orlando's analysis of Oscar Wilde's influence on Wharton and Ogden Codman Jr., Naomi Wolf's exploration of Wharton as an “Heiress to Gay Male Sexual Radicalism,” and Shannon Brennan's exploration of “Queer Objects and Orientations” in the author's fictional haunted houses demonstrate that Wharton, as Brennan argues, “renders queerness an always-available mode of experience during a period that was increasingly invested in understanding sexual orientation to be a matter of identity.” Susan Goodman's analysis of Wharton's revisions to the genre of autobiography in A Backward Glance provides a new way to interpret...
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