Chapter 3 - Edith Wharton and the Business of the Magazine Short Story

Summary

Making the most of her good fortune to be writing in one of the most dynamic chapters in the history of the American periodical, Edith Wharton sold her stories to the genteel monthlies, slicks and pulps, where her short fiction garnered a readership of millions by the end of her career. Re-placed in their original magazine frames, her short stories chart Wharton’s response to the different print cultures in which she wrote and this essay explores how, as the market developed, so, correspondingly, did Wharton’s narrative response to the stories’ ideological and physical publishing context. Here I argue that, when read in the very different magazines in which they were originally published, from the early genteel periodicals to the later mass magazines, distinct patterns in the stories emerge, both in terms of Wharton’s narrative poetics, and the techniques she uses in her increasingly crafted and wry assessment of the industry which she spent a lifetime courting and criticizing.