Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that answer the question.
Query: What was Edith Wharton's last book?
In 1889, she sent out three poems for publication. They were sent to Scribner’s, Harper’s and Century. Edward L. Burlingame published "The Last Giustiniani" for Scribner’s. It was not until Wharton was 29 that her first short story was published. "Mrs. Manstey's View" had very little success, and it took her more than a year to publish another story. She completed "The Fullness of Life" following her annual European trip with Teddy. Burlingame was critical of this story but Wharton did not want to make edits to it. This story, along with many others, speaks about her marriage. She sent Bunner Sisters to Scribner's in 1892. Burlingame wrote back that it was too long for Scribner's to publish. This story is believed to be based on an experience she had as a child. It did not see publication until 1916 and is included in the collection called Xingu. After a visit with her friend, Paul Bourget, she wrote "The Good May Come" and "The Lamp of Psyche". "The Lamp of Psyche" was a comical story with verbal wit and sorrow. After "Something Exquisite" was rejected by Burlingame, she lost confidence in herself. She started "travel writing" in 1894.[37]
Her husband, Edward Wharton, shared her love of travel and for many years they spent at least four months of each year abroad, mainly in Italy. Their friend, Egerton Winthrop, accompanied them on many journeys in Italy.[36] In 1888, the Whartons and their friend James Van Alen took a cruise through the Aegean islands. Wharton was 26. The trip cost the Whartons $10,000 and lasted four months.[37] She kept a travel journal during this trip that was thought to be lost but was later published as The Cruise of the Vanadis, now considered her earliest known travel writing.[38]
Julian Fellowes has cited "The Custom of the Country" as an inspiration for his creative work, including "Downton Abbey". Upon receiving the Edith Wharton Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012 in Boston, Massachusetts, Fellowes said: "It is quite true that I felt this was my book; that the novel was talking to me in a most extreme and immediate way. I think it's a remarkable piece of writing. In Undine Spragg, Wharton has created an anti-heroine absolutely in the same rank as Becky Sharp, Scarlett O'Hara, or Lizzie Eustace. Undine has no values except ambition, greed and desire, and yet through the miracle of Wharton's writing, you are on her side. That's what's so extraordinary about the book...I decided, largely because of her work, that it was time I wrote something."
The House of Mirth was adapted as a play in 1906 by Edith Wharton and Clyde Fitch[73][74] The Age of Innocence was adapted as a play in 1928. Katharine Cornell played the role of Ellen Olenska.
The Letters of Edith Wharton (R. W. B. Lewis and Nancy Lewis, eds.) ISBN0-02-034400-7, particularly the editorial introductions to the chronological sections, especially for 1902–07, 1911–14, 1919–27, and 1928–37, and the editorial footnotes to the letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald (8 June 1925) Novellas and Other Writings (Cynthia Griffin Wolff, ed.) (, 1990) ISBN978-0-940450-53-0, which contains her autobiography, A Backward Glance. Twilight Sleep (R. F. Godfrey, ed.) ISBN0-684-83964-4 Armbruster, Elif S. (2011) "Domestic Biographies: Stowe, Howells, James, and Wharton at Home." New York: Peter Lang (ISBN978-1433112492) Benstock, Shari (1994) No Gifts From Chance: a biography of Edith Wharton. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Edith Wharton's French Riviera (2002) Philippe Collas and Eric Villedary, Paris, New York: Flammarion/Rizzoli (ISBN2-84110-161-4) Dwight, Eleanor. (1994) Edith Wharton: An Extraordinary Life, An Illustrated Biography New York: Harry N. Abrams. Hutchinson, Hazel (2015). The War That Used Up Words: American Writers and the First World War. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Lee, Hermione (2007) Edith Wharton. London: Chatto & Windus; New York: Knopf. Lewis, R. W. B. (1975) Edith Wharton: a biography New York: Harper & Row ISBN0-06-012603-5 Montgomery, Maureen E. (1998) Displaying Women: Spectacles of Leisure in Edith Wharton's New York New York: Routledge. ISBN0-415-90566-4 Wolff, Cynthia Griffin (1977) A Feast of Words: The Triumph of Edith Wharton Oxford. ISBN0-19-502117-7 Wolff, Cynthia Griffin (1995) A Feast of Words: The Triumph of Edith Wharton, Second Edition. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley. ISBN0-201-40918-6
Undine Spragg in "The Custom of the Country" acts as if she is entitled to a rich, luxurious lifestyle. "As stated in The Disillusion of Marriage: The Failing Quest for Happiness in Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, Summer, and The Custom of the Country" "Her rise through the ranks of New York society from the nouveau riche
demonstrates her ability to use marriage and divorce in order to achieve her desire for social
dominance." Undine has allowed a "consumerist society" to shape her personalities as the scenery changes throughout the book. "Wharton personifies consumer culture through Undine Spragg, demonstrating how individual agency gets lost when involved in the system."
Schneeberger, S. A. (2018). The disillusion of marriage: The failing quest for happiness in edith wharton's the house of mirth, summer, and the custom of the country (Order No. 10823383). 
In 2012, Fields published "The Age of Desire" (Penguin Group, 2012) based on the life of American author Edith Wharton. The novel centers on Wharton's illicit affair with journalist William Morton Fullerton and that affair's effect on both her unstable husband, Edward R. "Teddy" Wharton, and her close friendship with her lifelong friend and confidant, her literary secretary Anna Bahlmann. 
Until recently, little had been known about Bahlmann but Fields was one of the first to have access to over 100 previously unknown letters from Wharton to Bahlmann that were auctioned in 2009. The letters are now in the collection of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University and form the basis of another 2012 publication, "My Dear Governess: The Letters of Edith Wharton to Anna Bahlmann" by Irene Goldman-Price.
Fields' books have been published in Germany, Italy, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
Shaffer-Koros, Carole M. “Nietzsche, German Culture and Edith Wharton.” "Edith Wharton Review" 20.2 (Fall 2004): 7-10. 
Ethan Frome, a 1960 (CBS) TV US adaptation, directed by Alex Segal, starring Sterling Hayden as Ethan Frome, Julie Harris as Mattie Silver and Clarice Blackburn as Zenobia Frome. First Wharton adaptation on television. Looking Back, a 1981 TV US loose adaptation of two biographies of Edith Wharton: A Backward Glance, Wharton's own 1934 autobiography & Edith Wharton, a 1975 biography by R.W.B. Lewis (1976 Bancroft Prize-winner). The House of Mirth, a 1981 TV US adaptation, directed by Adrian Hall, starring William Atherton, Geraldine Chaplin and Barbara Blossom The Buccaneers, a 1995 BBC mini-series, starring Carla Gugino and Greg Wise
Time Magazine also wrote an editorial on her last novel in 1938. It begins with, "Death last year ended Edith Wharton's work on a novel that might have been her masterpiece.She has written 29 chapters of a book apparently planned to run about 35 chapters. The story had reached its climax; the characters were at a moment in their careers when they were compelled to make irrevocable decisions. While Mrs. Wharton left notes suggesting how she intended to end the novel, she gave no hint of how she intended to solve its moral and esthetic problems."
During World War I, Brosseau supported Edith Wharton in her war-reliefs projects; a letter from August 7, 1919, from Wharton to Brosseau thanks Brosseau for sending 100 francs from Mills College, Wharton writes "all the children of Flanders went back to Belgium last month".
Hefko, Daniel. “Adapting ‘Roman Fever.’” Edith Wharton in Washington, Conference Abstract. "Edith Wharton Review 32.1-2 (2016): 115 - 116."
"Afterward" is a short story by American writer Edith Wharton. It was first published in the 1910 edition of "The Century Magazine". and later reprinted in her books " The Collected Short Stories of Edith Wharton" and "Tales of Men and Ghosts" (1910). It is an ironic ghost story about greed and retribution. The ghost comes for one of the main characters long after a business transgression where the character wronged another.
Over the years there has been criticism and division over the success of the completed novel. There has been chapter by chapter analysis of the novel to find the key differences between Mainwaring's and Wharton's writings. Lee Sigelman has written on the question of " Did Mainwaring do what Wharton would have done herself?". After following her writing patterns of Wharton's other works such as Ethan Frome, The House of Mirth, and The Age of Innocence he concluded it was easy to see where Edith Wharton's version ended and where Marion Mainwaring's began due to Edith Wharton's methodical writing style and patterns.
Wharton was a committed supporter of French imperialism, describing herself as a "rabid imperialist", and the war solidified her political views.[58] After the war she travelled to Morocco as the guest of Resident General Hubert Lyautey and wrote a book, In Morocco, about her experiences. Wharton's writing on her Moroccan travels is full of praise for the French administration and for Lyautey and his wife in particular.
Villa Cetinale was one of the 70 gardens included by Edith Wharton in her 1904 book "Italian Villas and Their Gardens", with illustrations and a plan of it. The garden is also included in the 1997 book "Edith Wharton’s Italian Gardens" by Vivian Russell, and featured on the cover.
In 1897 Edith Wharton purchased Land's End, Newport, Rhode Island, from Robert Livingston Beeckman, a former U.S. Open Tennis Championship runner-up who would go on to become Governor of Rhode Island. At that time Wharton described the main house as "incurably ugly." Wharton agreed to pay $80,000 for the property, and spend thousands more to alter the home's facade, decorate the interior, and landscape the grounds.
What is most notable about A Backward Glance, however, is what it does not tell: her criticism of Lucretia Jones [her mother], her difficulties with Teddy, and her affair with Morton Fullerton, which did not come to light until her papers, deposited in Yale's Beinecke Rare Book Room and Manuscript Library, were opened in 1968.[62]
The Buccaneers is the last novel written by Edith Wharton. The novel is set in the 1870s, around the time Edith Wharton was a young girl. It was unfinished at the time of her death in 1937, and published in that form in 1938. Wharton's manuscript ends with Lizzy inviting Nan to a house party to which Guy Thwarte has also been invited. The book was published in 1938 by Penguin Books in New York. After some time, Marion Mainwaring finished the novel following Wharton's detailed outline of the novel in 1993.
In The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, Edith Wharton (Clare Higgins) travels across North Africa with Indiana Jones in Chapter 16, Tales of Innocence. Edith Wharton is mentioned in the HBO television series Entourage in the third season's 13th episode: Vince is handed a screenplay for Wharton's The Glimpses of the Moon by Amanda, his new agent, for a film to be directed by Sam Mendes. In the same episode, period films of Wharton's work are lampooned by agent Ari Gold, who says that all her stories are "about a guy who likes a girl, but he can't have sex with her for five years, because those were the times!" Carla Gugino, who plays Amanda, was the protagonist of the BBC-PBS adaptation of The Buccaneers (1995), one of her early jobs. "Edith Wharton's Journey" is a radio adaptation, for the NPR series Radio Tales, of the short story "A Journey" from Edith Wharton's collection The Greater Inclination. The American singer and songwriter Suzanne Vega pays homage to Edith Wharton in her song "Edith Wharton's Figurines", from her studio album Beauty & Crime.
Auchincloss, Louis (1961). Edith Wharton and her New Yorks, Reflections of a Jacobite. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Barnett, Louise K.(1989). Language, gender and society in The House of Mirth. Connecticut Review 11.2 (Summer), 54-63. Commander, Katherine Lucille (2008). "Tragedy in The House of Mirth: The decline of Lily Bart" University of Tennessee Honors Thesis Projects. in in Rattray, L.(ed.).(2012). Edith Wharton in Context. New York: Cambridge University Press. 400pp. Showalter, Elaine, The death of the lady (novelist): Wharton's House of Mirth in Carol J. Singley, ed. (2003). Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, A Case Book, pp.39–61. New York: Oxford University Press. p.337. ISBN0-19-515603-X. Singley, Carol J., Introduction in Carol J. Singley, ed. (2003). Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, A Case Book,pp.3–24. New York: Oxford University Press. p.337. ISBN0-19-515603-X. in in in Wolff, Cynthia Griffin, Lily Bart and the drama of femininity in Carol J. Singley, ed. (2003). Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, A Case Book,pp.209–228. New York: Oxford University Press. p.337. ISBN0-19-515603-X.
Kornasky, L. (2014). Edith Wharton in context. Studies in American Naturalism, 9(1), 107. Preston, C. (2004). The critical reception of Edith Wharton. The Yearbook of English Studies, 34(1) Nineteenth-Century Travel Writing,336-338.Accessed: 01-04-2016 03:52 UTC.DOI: 10.2307/3509561 Singley, C., & Moseley, A. (2007). Wharton and Cather. American Literary Scholarship, 2007(1), 139-168. Wharton, Edith. (1905). Mr. Sturgis's Belchamber, Bookman, 21(May), 309-310.
Almost universally praised by critics, "Roman Fever" earned a place in "An Edith Wharton Treasury" (1950) and "The Best Short Stories of Edith Wharton" (1958). It is the title story of "Roman Fever and Other Stories", a collection of Wharton's writing originally published in 1964 and still in print. Widely thought to be one of Wharton's most anthologized stories, "Roman Fever" is the subject of numerous critical studies as outlined in the partial bibliography provided below. 
Edith Wharton (/ˈhwɔːrtən/; born Edith Newbold Jones; January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937) was an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, and designer. Wharton drew upon her insider's knowledge of the upper class New York "aristocracy" to realistically portray the lives and morals of the Gilded Age. She was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, in 1921. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1996.[1]
Updike's friendship with Edith Wharton led to a long and successful relationship between Merrymount Press and Wharton's publisher, Scribner's. When Wharton published her first book in 1899, "The Greater Inclination", she insisted that Merrymount be the printer. Merrymount would print many more of Wharton's books and other titles published by Scribner's. The association was a fruitful one and vital to Merrymount's success in its early years according to Updike: “Nothing could have helped the Press more, just then, than the Scribner connection, for it showed we were not amateurs but could hold our own with larger printing houses…” In 1915, after visiting the front of World War I, Wharton began collaborating with Updike to plan a collection of original stories, essays, poems, art works, and musical scores, the profits from which would benefit the war effort. The book was published in 1916 alongside a special limited edition run of 175 copies, each signed by Updike.