James and Wharton

Friends, rivals, fellow ex-pats, and close correspondents for 15 years, Henry James and Edith Wharton had much in common. Their names are often coupled together in much the manner as Hemingway and Fitzgerald, since their fiction has often thought to deal with the same set of concerns: the societal and emotional ups and downs of well-to-do people in London, Paris, and New York. This class will read James and Wharton side by side in order not only to see in what ways they shed light on each other, but in what ways they differ. Limited to 19 first-year students.