No Gifts from Chance: A Biography of Edith Wharton

by Shari Benstock

Overview

The first new biography of America's foremost woman of letters in twenty years, No Gifts from Chance presents an Edith Wharton for our times. Far from the emotionally withdrawn and neurasthenic victim of earlier portraits, she is revealed here as an ambitious, disciplined, and self-determined woman who fashioned life to her own desires. Drawing on government records, legal and medical documents, and recently opened collections of Wharton's letters, Shari Benstock's biography offers new information on what have been called the key mysteries of her life: the question of her paternity, her troubled relations with her mother and older brothers, her marriage to manic-depressive Teddy Wharton, and her extramarital affair with Morton Fullerton.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780292702745
Publisher:	University of Texas Press
Publication date:	03/01/2004
Series:	Louann Atkins Temple Women & Culture Series , #5
Pages:	575
Sales rank:	227,897
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Shari Benstock is Professor of English at the University of Miami (Florida).

Table of Contents

• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Book I. The Old Order
  • Chapter 1. A Question of Heritage
  • Chapter 2. Explorations
  • Chapter 3. Endeavors
• Book II. Choices
  • Chapter 4. Awakenings
  • Chapter 5. Estrangements
  • Chapter 6. Departures
• Book III. Rewards
  • Chapter 7. Charity
  • Chapter 8. Profits
  • Chapter 9. Losses
  • Chapter 10. Loyalties
• Archives and Abbreviations
• Chronology of Works by Edith Wharton
• Primary Works Cited: Abbreviations
• A Note on Edith Wharton's Letters to Morton Fullerton
• Notes
• Index