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The years between 1880 and 1930 are usually seen as a time in which American writers replaced values and traditions of the Victorian era with wholly new works of modernist literature, and the turn of the century is typically used as a dividing line between the old and the new. Challenging this periodization, this volume argues that this entire time span should instead be studied as a coherent and complex literary field.

Edith Wharton and Cosmopolitanism shows that Wharton was highly engaged with global issues of her time, due in part to her extensive travel abroad. Examining both her canonical and lesser-known works and including her art historical discoveries, her political writings, and her travel writing, the essays in this volume explore Wharton's diverse, complex, and sometimes problematic relationship to a cosmopolitan vision.