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Emily Orlando

Fairfield University, English, Department Member

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Professor of English and the E. Gerald Corrigan Chair in the Humanities and Social Sciences at Fairfield University USA. Past President, The Edith Wharton Society. Editor, The Bloomsbury Handbook to Edith Wharton (2023).
Address: Fairfield , Connecticut, United States

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University of the Arts London

Walters Art Museum

Emmanuelle Christie

Humber College of Applied Arts and Technology

Claire Yearwood

University of York

Helen Victoria Murray

The Glasgow School of Art

National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Mariana Bicudo Cunha

Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa

Appalachian State University

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Papers by Emily Orlando

"That I May Not Faint, or Die, or Swoon": Reviving Pre-Raphaelite Women

Women's Studies, 2009

Shortly after making the video available on 30 June 2008, Fox News issued a lukewarm apology, cit... more Shortly after making the video available on 30 June 2008, Fox News issued a lukewarm apology, citing a "producer error." The passage from Poe's "Philosophy of Composition" (1846) is as follows: "the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world-and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover." I would like to thank

The Figure of Consciousness: William James, Henry James, and Edith Wharton (review)

Modern Fiction Studies, 2004

Introduction: Broadening the Horizon of Edith Wharton Studies

Bloomsbury Academic eBooks, 2022

Introduction: Broadening the Horizon of Edith Wharton Studies

Bloomsbury Academic eBooks, 2022

Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and the Place of Culture by Julie Olin-Ammentorp

Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers

"The Future Belonged to the Showy and the Promiscuous": How Edith Wharton Foresaw the 21st Century

LitHub, 2023

published on LitHub for Edith Wharton's 24 Jan 2023 birthday

Edith Wharton and the Architect: The Olney-Beecher Version of "The Keys of Heaven

Edith Wharton Review, 2022

Abstract:To date, the only scholarly attention paid to the two abandoned Wharton novels called &q... more Abstract:To date, the only scholarly attention paid to the two abandoned Wharton novels called "The Keys of Heaven" has focused on the "Praslin version," a retelling of a murder-suicide from 1840s Paris. The "Olney-Beecher version" concerns a woman named Catherine Beecher, her would-be lover Jacob Olney, and her husband, a New England architect who sounds a lot like Ogden Codman Jr., with whom Wharton wrote The Decoration of Houses. This overlooked material evidently from the mid-1920s should be of interest to scholars for the potential light it sheds on her writing from the period and on the status of her rift with Codman. The evidence suggests that Wharton's fictional narratives moved from a place where she was writing in "one long shriek" to a space where she could imagine a lover turning the handle of that inner door and crossing the threshold into a room full of treasures awaiting discovery.

“One Long Vision of Beauty”: Edith Wharton and Italian Visual Culture

By the start of the twentieth century, Edith Wharton had earned a place for herself in the fields... more By the start of the twentieth century, Edith Wharton had earned a place for herself in the fields of architecture and interior décor with the release of the design treatise The Decoration of Houses (1897) and, shortly thereafter, two books on Italy: Italian Villas and Their Gardens (1904) and Italian Backgrounds (1905). Reflecting, in A Backward Glance, on &quot;the unexpected popularity&quot; of her first book, Wharton humbly notes, &quot;I was only beginning to be known as a novelist, but on Italian seventeenth and eighteenth century architecture, about which so little had been written, I was thought to be fairly competent. &quot; &quot;Fairly competent&quot; would prove quite the understatement. Contemplating what moved her to write about architecture and design, Wharton offers, &quot;I knew that, at least in English, there was no serious work on Italian villa and garden architecture, and I meant, as far as I was able, to fill the want. &quot; This essay argues that Wharton&#39;s command of and great reverence for Italy-a site that inspires &quot;rapt contemplation, &quot; begets communion with &quot;a mighty current, &quot; and amounts to &quot;one long vision of beauty&quot;-not only made possible her two studies of Italy but also substantially informs the aesthetic of her early career, as is most evident in The Decoration of Houses. Italy, whose &quot;very air is full of architecture, &quot; is for Wharton &quot;the very beginning of things. &quot;

Review: Edith Wharton and the Making of Fashion

Memorial Boxes and Guarded Interiors

Edith Wharton and the Architect

Edith Wharton Review, 2021

To date, the only scholarly attention paid to the two abandoned Wharton novels called “The Keys o... more To date, the only scholarly attention paid to the two abandoned Wharton novels called “The Keys of Heaven” has focused on the “Praslin version,” a retelling of a murder-suicide from 1840s Paris. The “Olney-Beecher version” concerns a woman named Catherine Beecher, her would-be lover Jacob Olney, and her husband, a New England architect who sounds a lot like Ogden Codman Jr., with whom Wharton wrote The Decoration of Houses. This overlooked material evidently from the mid-1920s should be of interest to scholars for the potential light it sheds on her writing from the period and on the status of her rift with Codman. The evidence suggests that Wharton's fictional narratives moved from a place where she was writing in “one long shriek” to a space where she could imagine a lover turning the handle of that inner door and crossing the threshold into a room full of treasures awaiting discovery.

Edith Wharton and the New Narcissism

Women's Studies, 2015

This document will continue to evolve as the IR expands. Additional guidelines will be drafted, a... more

Edith Wharton and the New Narcissism

Women's Studies, 2015

This document will continue to evolve as the IR expands. Additional guidelines will be drafted, a... more

Edith Wharton and the New Narcissism

Women's Studies, 2015

This document will continue to evolve as the IR expands. Additional guidelines will be drafted, a... more

“Perilous Coquetry”: Oscar Wilde's Influence on Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman, Jr

American Literary Realism, 2017

The Decoration of Houses (1897), co-written with the architect Ogden Codman, Jr., put Edith Whart... more The Decoration of Houses (1897), co-written with the architect Ogden Codman, Jr., put Edith Wharton on the map as an authority on domestic aesthetics at the turn of the twentieth century. A kind of decorating guide for the wealthy set, the design manual "launched Wharton into contemporary architectural discourse and allied her with a sociocultural movement at once old guard and reformist, aesthetically neoclassical and civicly progressive." 1 The volume distinguished her as a writer highly attuned to aesthetics, form, taste, and a reverence for what she and Codman called "the best models." These are all concerns that powerfully inform the critically and commercially successful realist fiction for which Wharton would, by the publication of The House of Mirth (1905), become famous. The "perilous coquetry" marking Lizzie Hazeldean's drawing-room ("New Year's Day"), Newland Archer's "glazed black-walnut bookcases" (The Age of Innocence), and the François Boucher tapestries that read as dollar signs to Undine Spragg's acquisitive eyes (The Custom of the Country) all assume new meaning when read in the context of this book. For twenty-first-century readers enchanted by the "life-changing magic" 2 of home beautification, The Decoration of Houses resonates as a treatise on the possibilities afforded by sound house design and decoration. As it happens, another impeccably dressed arbiter of taste also made his American debut dispensing advice on interior décor. Oscar Wilde, then twenty-seven years old and known mostly as a velvet-clad poet and personality, lectured across North America on house decoration in 1882. 3 The most successful of Wilde's talks, "The House Beautiful" was first presented

Crude Ascending the Staircase

Critical Insights: Edith Wharton ed. by Myrto Drizou (review)

“Rereading Wharton’s ‘Poor Archer’: A Mr. ‘Might-have-been’ in The Age of Innocence

... A Mr. &quot;Might-have-been&quot; in The Age of Innocence Emily J. Orlando .. ... Rea... more ... A Mr. &quot;Might-have-been&quot; in The Age of Innocence Emily J. Orlando .. ... Reading The Age ofInnocence,most critics forgive Newland Archer his predilectionfor abstract, &quot;enthroned&quot; beauty and ignore Wharton&#x27;s critique of him as a voracious but inept reader.3R. ...

Beauty Enshrined in Edith Wharton’s Fiction

This chapter concerns moments in Wharton’s fiction in which women are “enshrined” in art as poems... more This chapter concerns moments in Wharton’s fiction in which women are “enshrined” in art as poems, pictures, or statues—idols intended for possession or exhibition (Letters 136). The chapter addresses Wharton’s lesser-known early tales “The Muse’s Tragedy,” “The Moving Finger,” “and “The Duchess at Prayer” in context with the well-known The House of Mirth, while drawing connections to other texts by

Edith Wharton and Cosmopolitanism

University Press of Florida

Edith Wharton and Cosmopolitanism explores Edith Wharton’s relation to the concept of cosmopolita... more Edith Wharton and Cosmopolitanism explores Edith Wharton’s relation to the concept of cosmopolitanism, as it extended toward her politics, her aesthetics, and her vision of cultural differences. Essays explore Wharton’s cosmopolitan ideas and ideals, influences such as American art historian Charles Eliot Norton; her attitudes toward transatlanticism and globalization; and her art-historical discoveries in Europe. This book also calls significant attention to Wharton’s lesser-known works, including her travel writing on Europe, war writing, and other nonfiction, as well as her first novel, The Valley of Decision. It demonstrates how Wharton struggled to balance her ideas about national and local identity with cosmopolitan values throughout her career.

"That I May Not Faint, or Die, or Swoon": Reviving Pre-Raphaelite Women

Women's Studies, 2009

Shortly after making the video available on 30 June 2008, Fox News issued a lukewarm apology, cit... more Shortly after making the video available on 30 June 2008, Fox News issued a lukewarm apology, citing a "producer error." The passage from Poe's "Philosophy of Composition" (1846) is as follows: "the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world-and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover." I would like to thank

The Figure of Consciousness: William James, Henry James, and Edith Wharton (review)

Modern Fiction Studies, 2004

Introduction: Broadening the Horizon of Edith Wharton Studies

Bloomsbury Academic eBooks, 2022

Introduction: Broadening the Horizon of Edith Wharton Studies

Bloomsbury Academic eBooks, 2022

Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and the Place of Culture by Julie Olin-Ammentorp

Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers

"The Future Belonged to the Showy and the Promiscuous": How Edith Wharton Foresaw the 21st Century

LitHub, 2023

published on LitHub for Edith Wharton's 24 Jan 2023 birthday

Edith Wharton and the Architect: The Olney-Beecher Version of "The Keys of Heaven

Edith Wharton Review, 2022

Abstract:To date, the only scholarly attention paid to the two abandoned Wharton novels called &q... more Abstract:To date, the only scholarly attention paid to the two abandoned Wharton novels called "The Keys of Heaven" has focused on the "Praslin version," a retelling of a murder-suicide from 1840s Paris. The "Olney-Beecher version" concerns a woman named Catherine Beecher, her would-be lover Jacob Olney, and her husband, a New England architect who sounds a lot like Ogden Codman Jr., with whom Wharton wrote The Decoration of Houses. This overlooked material evidently from the mid-1920s should be of interest to scholars for the potential light it sheds on her writing from the period and on the status of her rift with Codman. The evidence suggests that Wharton's fictional narratives moved from a place where she was writing in "one long shriek" to a space where she could imagine a lover turning the handle of that inner door and crossing the threshold into a room full of treasures awaiting discovery.

“One Long Vision of Beauty”: Edith Wharton and Italian Visual Culture

By the start of the twentieth century, Edith Wharton had earned a place for herself in the fields... more By the start of the twentieth century, Edith Wharton had earned a place for herself in the fields of architecture and interior décor with the release of the design treatise The Decoration of Houses (1897) and, shortly thereafter, two books on Italy: Italian Villas and Their Gardens (1904) and Italian Backgrounds (1905). Reflecting, in A Backward Glance, on &quot;the unexpected popularity&quot; of her first book, Wharton humbly notes, &quot;I was only beginning to be known as a novelist, but on Italian seventeenth and eighteenth century architecture, about which so little had been written, I was thought to be fairly competent. &quot; &quot;Fairly competent&quot; would prove quite the understatement. Contemplating what moved her to write about architecture and design, Wharton offers, &quot;I knew that, at least in English, there was no serious work on Italian villa and garden architecture, and I meant, as far as I was able, to fill the want. &quot; This essay argues that Wharton&#39;s command of and great reverence for Italy-a site that inspires &quot;rapt contemplation, &quot; begets communion with &quot;a mighty current, &quot; and amounts to &quot;one long vision of beauty&quot;-not only made possible her two studies of Italy but also substantially informs the aesthetic of her early career, as is most evident in The Decoration of Houses. Italy, whose &quot;very air is full of architecture, &quot; is for Wharton &quot;the very beginning of things. &quot;

Review: Edith Wharton and the Making of Fashion

Memorial Boxes and Guarded Interiors

Edith Wharton and the Architect

Edith Wharton Review, 2021

To date, the only scholarly attention paid to the two abandoned Wharton novels called “The Keys o... more To date, the only scholarly attention paid to the two abandoned Wharton novels called “The Keys of Heaven” has focused on the “Praslin version,” a retelling of a murder-suicide from 1840s Paris. The “Olney-Beecher version” concerns a woman named Catherine Beecher, her would-be lover Jacob Olney, and her husband, a New England architect who sounds a lot like Ogden Codman Jr., with whom Wharton wrote The Decoration of Houses. This overlooked material evidently from the mid-1920s should be of interest to scholars for the potential light it sheds on her writing from the period and on the status of her rift with Codman. The evidence suggests that Wharton's fictional narratives moved from a place where she was writing in “one long shriek” to a space where she could imagine a lover turning the handle of that inner door and crossing the threshold into a room full of treasures awaiting discovery.

Edith Wharton and the New Narcissism

Women's Studies, 2015

This document will continue to evolve as the IR expands. Additional guidelines will be drafted, a... more

Edith Wharton and the New Narcissism

Women's Studies, 2015

This document will continue to evolve as the IR expands. Additional guidelines will be drafted, a... more

Edith Wharton and the New Narcissism

Women's Studies, 2015

This document will continue to evolve as the IR expands. Additional guidelines will be drafted, a... more

“Perilous Coquetry”: Oscar Wilde's Influence on Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman, Jr

American Literary Realism, 2017

The Decoration of Houses (1897), co-written with the architect Ogden Codman, Jr., put Edith Whart... more The Decoration of Houses (1897), co-written with the architect Ogden Codman, Jr., put Edith Wharton on the map as an authority on domestic aesthetics at the turn of the twentieth century. A kind of decorating guide for the wealthy set, the design manual "launched Wharton into contemporary architectural discourse and allied her with a sociocultural movement at once old guard and reformist, aesthetically neoclassical and civicly progressive." 1 The volume distinguished her as a writer highly attuned to aesthetics, form, taste, and a reverence for what she and Codman called "the best models." These are all concerns that powerfully inform the critically and commercially successful realist fiction for which Wharton would, by the publication of The House of Mirth (1905), become famous. The "perilous coquetry" marking Lizzie Hazeldean's drawing-room ("New Year's Day"), Newland Archer's "glazed black-walnut bookcases" (The Age of Innocence), and the François Boucher tapestries that read as dollar signs to Undine Spragg's acquisitive eyes (The Custom of the Country) all assume new meaning when read in the context of this book. For twenty-first-century readers enchanted by the "life-changing magic" 2 of home beautification, The Decoration of Houses resonates as a treatise on the possibilities afforded by sound house design and decoration. As it happens, another impeccably dressed arbiter of taste also made his American debut dispensing advice on interior décor. Oscar Wilde, then twenty-seven years old and known mostly as a velvet-clad poet and personality, lectured across North America on house decoration in 1882. 3 The most successful of Wilde's talks, "The House Beautiful" was first presented

Crude Ascending the Staircase

Critical Insights: Edith Wharton ed. by Myrto Drizou (review)

“Rereading Wharton’s ‘Poor Archer’: A Mr. ‘Might-have-been’ in The Age of Innocence

... A Mr. &quot;Might-have-been&quot; in The Age of Innocence Emily J. Orlando .. ... Rea... more ... A Mr. &quot;Might-have-been&quot; in The Age of Innocence Emily J. Orlando .. ... Reading The Age ofInnocence,most critics forgive Newland Archer his predilectionfor abstract, &quot;enthroned&quot; beauty and ignore Wharton&#x27;s critique of him as a voracious but inept reader.3R. ...

Beauty Enshrined in Edith Wharton’s Fiction

This chapter concerns moments in Wharton’s fiction in which women are “enshrined” in art as poems... more This chapter concerns moments in Wharton’s fiction in which women are “enshrined” in art as poems, pictures, or statues—idols intended for possession or exhibition (Letters 136). The chapter addresses Wharton’s lesser-known early tales “The Muse’s Tragedy,” “The Moving Finger,” “and “The Duchess at Prayer” in context with the well-known The House of Mirth, while drawing connections to other texts by

Edith Wharton and Cosmopolitanism

University Press of Florida

Edith Wharton and Cosmopolitanism explores Edith Wharton’s relation to the concept of cosmopolita... more Edith Wharton and Cosmopolitanism explores Edith Wharton’s relation to the concept of cosmopolitanism, as it extended toward her politics, her aesthetics, and her vision of cultural differences. Essays explore Wharton’s cosmopolitan ideas and ideals, influences such as American art historian Charles Eliot Norton; her attitudes toward transatlanticism and globalization; and her art-historical discoveries in Europe. This book also calls significant attention to Wharton’s lesser-known works, including her travel writing on Europe, war writing, and other nonfiction, as well as her first novel, The Valley of Decision. It demonstrates how Wharton struggled to balance her ideas about national and local identity with cosmopolitan values throughout her career.