Edith Wharton and Kate Chopin: A Reference Guide by Marlene Springer (review)

280Reviews Springer, Marlene. Edith Wharton and Kate Chopin: A Reference Guide. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1976. 305 pp. Cloth: $24. One expects a reference guide to be accurate and easy to use. Marlene Springer's guide to the criticism on Edith Wharton and Kate Chopin, the fifth volume in G. K. Hall's bibliographical series on important writers, meets those requirements and is, in addition (and to my surprise, given the volume'sutilitarian mission), interesting. It is difficult tokeep from readingconsecutivelythrough the annotations, which surveyeightdecades ofcritical consensus and controversy about two great American writers. The first bibliography covers Wharton. Entries are listed chronologically, beginning with a review of The Decoration of Houses in 1897 and running through 1973; for each year, book-length studies appear first, followed by shorter works arranged according to publication date. Springer's aim "is to provide an accurate, comprehensive picture of the accessible material on Wharton" (viii), and that goal is admirably met. Still, like most bibliographies on a major author, this one must be selective. For instance, Springer omits reference to discussion of Wharton in Warner Berthoff's The Ferment of Realism: American Literature, 1884-1919 (1965) or William Wasserstrom's Heiress of All the Ages: Sex and Sentiment in the Genteel Tradition (1959), even though both books should appear, one could argue, because they are indispensable studies of the tradition in which Edith Wharton is often placed. There are a few other minor flaws. The index to Wharton at the end of the book could be more thorough (there is no subject-heading for "Manners" or 'Travel literature" or "Portraits"). For many readers it might have been helpful to distinguish the novels from the collections of short stories in the list of works by Edith Wharton at the beginning of thebook, and explicit information aboutlibrary collections of special interest to Wharton research shouldhavebeen included. These are small problems, however, weighed against the service that the bibliography capably renders both the scholar and the newcomer to Wharton studies. Springer has compiled a substantial, consistently well-annotated list of Wharton criticism and scholarship. Especiallyvaluable arethe contemporary reviews that Springer includes. She explains that "because the tone of all these reviews is often as important to Wharton scholarship as their content, I have as a matter of policy often quoted representative passages ratherthan paraphrasing" (viii). These brief passages are instructive—and entertaining—in themselves. One can follow debate about Wharton's style (perfect vs. "too" polished), about her leisure-class subject matter (fascinating vs. irrelevant), about her mentors and peers (from George Eliot and Henry James to Sinclair Lewis and Virginia Woolf), about the cast of her mind and moral vision (whether conservative or liberal or sordid—" 'always inclined to be sub-human' " [p. 45] is my favorite). The bibliography on Kate Chopin, which is naturally much shorter, begins with reviews of At Fault in 1890 and continues through 1973. Like the Wharton bibliography, it includes dissertations, representative contemporary reviews of Chopin's work, and all the major scholarship on the author. It follows the same format as the precedingbibliography, but in Chopin's case, because the canon (both primary and secondary) is smaller, Springer can be more inclusive than with Wharton; therefore passages about Chopin in standard literary histories (Spiller, Berthoff) and in severalbiographical dictionaries are annotated in the belief that even"a mention ofawriter now recognized asunjustly neglected is critically salient" (xi). The result is an excellent reference guide to existing work on Chopin. Studies in American Fiction281 Anyone studying Chopin or Wharton will find these bibliographies, which are efficiently organized and lucidly annotated, essential research guides to secondary material through 1973. Tufts UniversityElizabeth Ammons Select Societies: A Review Essay Rowe, John Carlos. Henry Adams and HenryJames: TheEmergence of a Modern Consciousness. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976. 254 pp. Cloth: $12.50. Both products of the nineteenth-century attempt to establish a native, unifying myth in place of abandoned European tradition, Henry Adams and Henry James found themselves essentially out of place in the twentieth century. For James, as John Carlos Rowe notes, America disregarded history; Adams felt it took no notice of us. Yet in their discomfortwith the notion of a meaningful correspondence...