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The End of the Age of Innocence: Edith Wharton and the First World War. By Alan Price. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998. ISBN 0-312-176775. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xvii, 238. $17.95.
Edith Wharton is more associated with Gilded Age aristocratic privilege than she is with the messy horrors of the Great War. In an effort to complicate her popular image as disinterested genteel artist, Alan Price has written a compelling (and occasionally surprising) account of Wharton's ardent commitment to and active involvement with European war-relief efforts. Based on extensive archival research, particularly unpublished letters and documents of the era, The End of the Age of Innocence is the first extended study of Wharton's war years-from the earliest intimations of war in 1914 through the 1918 Armistice-when a devotion to charity work virtually arrested her production of serious fiction. These are the most understudied and perhaps misunderstood years of Wharton's life. As an intelligent complement to the standard biographies by R. W. B. Lewis and Shari Benstock, Price's work is certain to assume a permanent place of importance in Wharton studies.
Wharton's interest in the war-and it was indeed an interest, in a fundamental sense-was personal and profound from the start. Like fellow expatriate Henry James, she had built her life and her...