"Imagining modernism as a series of conversations, this study locates Edith Wharton's voice in those debates - providing a new and thoughtful perspective. In chapters on French Impressionism and subjectivity, birth control and prostitution, masculinity, war and civilization, marriage and divorce, and the nature of the artist, this book traces Wharton's positions on the social, cultural, and literary issues that shaped modernism."--BOOK JACKET.