The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1

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Wharton's early stories — from the 1890s through the early 1900s — show the novelist before the major works, exploring the social world of New York and Newport with already formidable precision and irony. 'The Muse's Tragedy,' 'A Journey,' 'The Pelican' — each story anatomizes a social situation with the surgical precision that would define her mature fiction. As group reading, the stories' compressed social dramas and often surprising endings make them effective discussion starters.